Christina Hammock Koch

Some Lesser Known Facts About Christina Hammock Koch

• Christina Hammock Koch is an American engineer and NASA astronaut. In 2019, Christina Koch and Jessica Meir became the first women to participate in an all-female spacewalk. In the following year, she recorded the longest single spaceflight by a woman with 328 days in space during which she took six spacewalks. She made headlines in 2023 when she was selected as part of the crew for the Artemis II flight, which intended to circle the Moon in 2024.

• Koch’s mother hails from Frederick, Maryland, while her father hails from Jacksonville, NC. Her roots can be traced to West Michigan. ^[2]MLive

• Koch’s family moved from Grand Rapids to Dearborn, Michigan when she was an infant and then to North Carolina when she was a young girl.

• Growing up, she used to spend her summers in Grand Rapids, where she stayed at her grandparent’s farm in Sparta.

• Her maternal grandparents are farmers who own the Under the Pines fruit market on Alpine Avenue NW in Comstock Park. The Homrich family farm is run by Koch’s uncle Dave Homrich.

• She has also studied abroad, in Ghana, West Africa.

  

• A geek since childhood, Koch decided to become an astronaut when she attended a space camp in Huntsville, Alabama one summer.

• In 2001, Koch participated in the NASA Academy program at Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). Her career spanned both space science instrument development and remote scientific field engineering before becoming an astronaut.

• She worked as an Electrical Engineer at GSFC at the beginning of her career, contributing to scientific instruments on several NASA missions that studied astrophysics and cosmology.

• As a Research Associate in the United States Antarctic Program, Koch experienced a yearlong stay with a winter-over at the Admunsen-Scott South Pole Station and a season at Palmer Station. In this capacity, she served as a member of the Firefighting and Search and Rescue Teams.

• Thereafter, she returned to space science instrument development as an Electrical Engineer at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory’s Space Department, where she contributed to instruments on missions like Juno and the Van Allen Probes.

• Then, she returned to remote scientific field work with tours at Palmer Station in Antarctica and winter seasons at Summit Station in Greenland.

• Later, she joined the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and continued working at remote scientific bases. She served as a Field Engineer in Utqiagvik, Alaska and then as Station Chief of the American Samoa Observatory.

• Throughout her career, she was involved in technical instructing, volunteer tutoring, and educational outreach.

• In 2013, she was selected as one of eight members of the 21st NASA astronaut class. She completed her Astronaut Candidate training in 2015.

• In 2018, she was assigned to her first space flight, a long-duration mission on the International Space Station (ISS). She was launched to the ISS on Soyuz MS-12 from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakstan on 14 March 2019.

• She served as a flight engineer on the ISS for Expedition 59, 60, and 61 during which she contributed to numerous experiments in biology, Earth science, human research, physical science, and technology development.

  

• Koch and Jessica Meir became the first women to participate in an all-female spacewalk on 18 October 2019, conducted as part of a lengthy series of upgrades to the ISS’ power systems and physics observatories.

• During her stay at ISS, Koch conducted six spacewalks, including the first three all-women spacewalks, totalling 42 hours and 15 minutes.

• On 28 December 2019, Koch broke the record for the longest single continuous stay in space for a woman surpassing Peggy Whitson’s 289 days long stay. Koch returned from space on 6 February 2020 after a 328-day long stay at ISS.

• After returning from her first spaceflight, Koch served as Branch Chief of the Assigned Crew Branch in the Astronaut Office. Thereafter, she started serving in a rotational position as the NASA Johnson Space Center Director’s Assistant for Technical Integration.

• In 2017, NASA launched the Artemis program, along with three partner agencies—the European Space Agency (ESA), the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), with an aim to re-establish a human presence on the Moon. The first spaceflight of the program, Artemis 1, was uncrewed and was launched on 16 November 2022. On 3 April 2023, NASA announced the crew for the Artemis program’s first crewed spaceflight, Artemis II, which included four members, Gregory R. Wiseman, Christina Hammock Koch, Victor Glover, and Jeremy Hansen. Artemis 2 is the first crewed lunar mission since Apollo 17 in 1972, which will perform a lunar flyby test and return to Earth. If successful, the mission would lead Christina Hammock Koch to become the first woman to orbit the moon.

• Adventurous since childhood, she enjoys doing various outdoor activities like backpacking, rock climbing, paddling, surfing, running, travelling, and doing yoga, community service, and photography in her leisure time.

  

• She has motorcycled solo across the US, from North Carolina to Montana.

  

• In 2020, she received an Honorary PhD from North Carolina State University.