Christina Koch is just weeks away from becoming the first woman in history to fly to the moon. The 47-year old astronaut is part of NASA’s Artemis II mission, which is set to travel around the Moon and back on a 10-day journey, launching in April.
Joining Koch in the historic flight will be fellow astronauts Reid Wiseman, Jeremy Hansen and Victor Glover, who will become the first Black person on board a human lunar spaceflight.
As the Artemis programme’s first crewed flight, the mission will see the astronauts travel further into space than any human before them, marking NASA’s next phase toward sending astronauts to Mars.
The launch was initially scheduled to launch last month, but when engineers discovered a technical issue with the rocket, lift off was delayed.
According to one expert at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the mission will also collect data about the science of the moon, astronauts’ health and the rocket.
Koch graduated from the NASA Academy program in 2001 before working as an electrical engineer for a laboratory at Goddard Space Flight Center in Washington, D.C.
In 2013, at the age of 34, she was selected as an astronaut by NASA. Over the next decade, she travelled to the International Space Station on several research missions and participated in six spacewalks, including the first three all-female spacewalks. In 2020, Koch made history after spending a record 328 days in space, the longest mission of any female astronaut.
At the press conference when the Artemis astronauts were announced in 2023, Koch said, “The one thing I’m most excited about is that we are going to carry your excitement, your aspiration, your dreams with us on this mission.”
“When I was young, I had a poster of the Earthrise picture- the famous picture that was taken on Apollo 8,”Koch said. “The fact that it was a human behind the lens that made that picture so profound and changed how we all thought of our own home was so amazing to me.
“The moon is not just a symbol of thinking about our place in the universe. It’s not just a symbol of exploration. It’s actually a beacon for science. It’s a beacon for understanding where we came from.”
Last week, Koch and her fellow crew members attended Trump’s State of the Union address as guests of House Speaker Mike Johnson, though the president did not mention their mission.
Last year, U.S. Senate introduced new legislation to pave the way for NASA to “advance American leadership in deep space exploration,” prevent “a gap in low Earth orbit leadership and capability,” and sustain “scientific ingenuity.”