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Who is Christina Koch — the first woman to fly around the Moon
Christina Koch has already spent nearly a year in space. Now, she is on a mission taking her even farther — around the Moon.
Selected as part of Artemis II, Koch is the first woman to travel beyond low Earth orbit and fly around the Moon, marking a historic shift in who gets represented in space exploration.
Koch joined NASA in 2013, but her path to space was anything but typical.
She worked as an electrical engineer on space science instruments and spent long stretches in extreme environments, including research stations in Antarctica and the Arctic. Those experiences, NASA says, helped prepare her for the isolation and pressure of long-duration missions.
According to her official NASA biography, her background in both engineering and field science made her well-suited for human spaceflight.
A record-breaker in orbit
Before Artemis II, Koch had already secured her place in history.
During her mission aboard the International Space Station, she spent 328 consecutive days in space, the longest single spaceflight by a woman. She also took part in the first all-female spacewalk in 2019 alongside astronaut Jessica Meir.
Meanwhile, Artemis II is NASA’s first crewed lunar mission since the Apollo program.
She and her crewmates will not land on the Moon. Instead, they will orbit it and return to Earth, testing systems that will enable future missions to land astronauts on the lunar surface.
Koch, alongside her co-NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen are the first wave of astronauts in a multibillion-dollar series of missions under the Artemis program that aims to return humans to the moon's surface by 2028 before China, and establish a long-term US presence over the next decade, building a moon base for potential future missions to Mars.
Women making history
Koch’s journey reflects how space exploration is evolving.
For decades, the image of an astronaut followed a narrow mold. Today, missions like Artemis are expanding that image by opening opportunities to a more diverse group of explorers.
"The thing that changed for me, looking back at Earth, was that I found myself noticing not only the beauty of Earth, but how much blackness there was around it and how it just made it even more special. It truly emphasized how alike we are, how the same thing keeps every single person on planet Earth alive," Koch said, as posted on NASA's Instagram account.
"We evolved on the same planet, and we have some shared things about how we love and live that are just universal. And the specialness and preciousness of that really is emphasized when you notice how much else there is around it," Koch added.
At the same time, her story has resonated far beyond science. A widely shared photo of Koch gazing back at Earth, her hair floating in braids, struck a chord especially with women and young girls. Many saw in that moment not just an astronaut, but someone who was once a little girl who dared to dream of the impossible.
Her journey is more than a milestone in space exploration. It is a reminder that those dreams — even the ones that seem out of reach, are possible. For many, Koch represents proof that a little girl looking up at the Moon today could one day fly around it. — RSJ, GMA News
