On April 11th, the spacecraft Artemis II landed back on earth after orbiting the Moon for 10 days. The crew consisted of four astronauts and one of them, for the first time ever, was a woman.
Early Life And Academic Career
Christina Koch was born on January 29 of 1979 in Michigan, U.S. Ever since she was a child, she wanted to be an astronaut, even though she knew the odds for this life long dream were slight.
To help achieve her goal, she went to Space Camp in Alabama, a STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) program that included a beginners astronaut training. She attended the University of North Carolina and in 2001 she got her bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. To amplify her qualification, she got a bachelor’s degree in physics, both of these courses partially funded by awards from the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation. She also got a master’s degree in electrical engineering in 2002.
Her drive stood her out and made her remarkable, as her former undergraduate counselor, Dr. Stephen Reynolds, said so in an interview for ABC11.
Since graduating and before becoming an astronaut, Koch accumulated a lot of experience in different work scenarios and science research projects. In 2002, she started to work as an electrical engineer at NASA’s Laboratory For High Energy Astrophysics. Then, she joined the United States Antarctic Program for three years.
The isolation, brutal environment and limited supplies helped her get a view on how her experience in space would be like in ISS (International Space Center)-like conditions. She also worked in space research for NASA and NOAA (National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration), developing instruments for space missions and probes, such as Juno, Jupiter’s orbiter.
NASA, at last.
In 2013, her long curriculum and experience made her one of the eight selected scientists for the group of NASA’s astronauts. After two years of harsh training and learning how to fly jets, Christina entered regular astronaut rotation and became eligible for assignment.
Her first space trip went on to happen in March of 2018, alongside crewmates Aleksey Ovchinin and Nick Hague on a mission for ISS for Expeditions 59, 60 and 61, in which she worked as a Flight Engineer.
This mission made her break the record for the woman with the most consecutive days in space when she landed in February of 2020, after spending 328 days in a spacecraft.
That wasn’t her first time surpassing a record, though. After the ISS mission, she worked alongside Jessica Meir in the first planned spacewalk by two women. They worked for over 7 hours outside the ISS upgrading power systems.
Since joining NASA, her research and space missions that once seemed like an impossible accomplishment, now are constant in her work life. She spent months in orbit performing scientific research on the effects of microgravity on the human body, regularly collecting samples of her own body to later analyze on Earth.
The study consisted on understanding how the biological systems in the human body change once leaving the Earth, and tracking the longability of these alterations. The expected result is that doctors and engineers can find ways to soften the negative effects by the exposure of microgravity.
In 2023, she was chosen to participate as a mission specialist on the Artemis II mission, alongside commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover Jr., and mission specialist Jeremy Hansen, the first crewed flight of the Artemis program.
The Artemis II
The mission aimed on flying around the Moon to test life support systems, an essential initiative for future crewed space missions around the Moon and, eventually, Mars. The Orion launched from the Kennedy Space Center on April 1st was the first to take humans to the proximity of the Moon since the Apollo 17, in 1972.
The crew got back to earth after a 10 day mission of April 11th. Koch’s part on this mission is not only significant for the space agency, but also for the female engineers and the little girls who, just like her, dream of going to space.
During and since landing from the Moon, women all around the world look up at Christina Koch with admiration. The Artemis II is not only scientific discovery, but also the start of new and diverse formations of space crew. As said by Koch in an interview for Space.com:
“Decades ago, we made the right decisions so that our astronaut corps brings diverse backgrounds together to solve the hardest problems. And that, to me, is what’s truly worth celebrating, and what I’m honored to be a part of.” ———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
The article above was edited and translated by Ana Beatriz Carvalho Sapata.
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