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Christina Koch will become the first woman to circumnavigate the moon when NASA’s Artemis II mission launches next year.
Christina Koch, 44, of Grand Rapids, Michigan, becomes the first woman to go around the moon
The 44-year-old resident of Grand Rapids, Michigan, already holds the record for the longest time a woman has spent in space, 328 days, and for participating in the first all-female spacewalk in 2019.
Ms Koch, who was selected to become an astronaut in 2013, said she didn’t follow a “checklist” for becoming an astronaut, but instead pursued her passions, be it rock climbing, sailing or even learning to surf when she was in is forty.
She said in 2020, “I really can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to be an astronaut.
“For me, I learned that if I was going to be an astronaut, it was because my passions had turned me into someone who could contribute the most as someone who contributes to human spaceflight.”
While exploring space, her husband Robert tends to the household and the couple’s puppy, LBD. They are not believed to have children.
NASA has revealed the identities of the four astronauts who will make the first trip to the moon since 1972 as part of the Artemis II mission. Victor Glover (second from left), 46, becomes the first person of color selected for a lunar mission, while Christina Koch (second from right), 44, becomes the first woman. They were chosen alongside Reid Wiseman (left), 47, of Baltimore, Maryland and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, 47 (right)
‘Am I excited? Absolute!’ she said at a press conference announcing the crew Monday.
“The one thing I’m most excited about is that we’re going to take your excitement, your aspirations, your dreams on this mission.”
She also said, “We’re going to launch from Kennedy Space Center, we’re going to put the words ‘go for launch’ here on top of the most powerful rocket NASA has ever made.”
NASA has sent a total of 355 people to space so far, of which about 55 are women — or 15 percent. It has also sent 24 people to the moon and 12 to walk on the lunar surface, all of them men.
Russian Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman ever to leave Earth’s atmosphere — she left in 1937. American women weren’t sent to space until 1983.
However, Ms. Koch will make history on the Artemis II mission when she completes her long-awaited trip around the moon.
She revealed her love for space in a video when she was announced as a member of the Artemis I team in 2020.
The astronaut said, “I am someone who has loved exploring the frontier since I was little.
“I used to be inspired by the night sky and throughout my career it’s been this balance between engineering for space science missions and doing science in really remote places around the world.
“I liked things that made me feel small, things that made me think about the size of the universe, my place in it, and everything there was to discover.”
She added, “I haven’t necessarily lived my life by check boxes of how to be an astronaut.
“But I followed those passions and one day I looked at what I had become and the skills I had acquired and I asked ‘can I sit across a table and present myself as someone who can do this well? And I thought: I’m going to try this.’
She attended North Carolina State University in Raleigh to earn a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in Electrical Engineering.
She then became an electrical engineer at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, before becoming a research associate for the United States Antarctic Program, where she spent an entire year living in the Arctic.
Ms. Koch was one of eight selected astronauts as part of NASA’s 21st class of astronauts in 2013. After two years of training, she became a full-fledged astronaut.
Her first spaceflight took place in 2019 when she was sent to the International Space Station (ISS) to work as a flight engineer.
She stayed there for 328 days and held the record for the longest spaceflight by a woman. The previous record holder, Peggy Whitson, was in space for 288 days.
While in space, she also took the record for the first all-female spacewalk — when an astronaut disembarks from a vehicle in space — with Jessica Meir.
Artemis II is a follow-up to the Artemis I mission, which completed a 25-day mission around the moon in late 2022. He rocketed into space on NASA’s new Space Launch System rocket (pictured)
Splashdown: Artemis I’s Orion capsule is retrieved from the Pacific after a successful mission
The pair spent seven hours and 17 minutes on the side of the ISS as they worked to replace a power controller. The walk also included a brief conversation with President Trump.
Upon her return to Earth in 2020, Ms Koch said she felt “like a baby” who was two weeks old and was working hard to keep his head upright.
Back on Earth, she lives in Galveston, Texas, just outside of Houston.
Among her interests are backpacking, running, yoga, photography and travelling.
Now she will be part of a groundbreaking mission in NASA’s goal of getting a man to Mars.
The Artemis II mission marks NASA’s first trip to the moon in half a century. It says it will be done to help prepare the test kit to get humans to Mars.
The agency sent an empty Orion capsule around the moon last year before returning to Earth in a much-anticipated dress rehearsal.
If this latest mission goes well, another flight will be sent in 2025 to land humans on the moon – as part of tests before taking humans to Mars.