Christina Koch - Astronaut
Age: 47
Country: United States Occupations:
Astronaut
Christina Hammock Koch is an American engineer and NASA astronaut who has made historic contributions to human space exploration.
Background and Education
Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and raised in Jacksonville, North Carolina, Koch aspired to be an astronaut from a young age. She attended North Carolina State University, where she earned bachelor’s degrees in both electrical engineering and physics, followed by a master’s degree in electrical engineering.
Before joining NASA's astronaut corps in 2013, her career spanned space science instrument development and remote field engineering. She worked as an engineer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. Her research also took her to extreme environments, conducting scientific fieldwork during tours in Antarctica, Greenland, Alaska, and American Samoa.
Spaceflight Milestones
Long-Duration ISS Mission (2019–2020): During her first spaceflight mission as a flight engineer on the International Space Station (ISS), Koch set the record for the longest single continuous spaceflight by a woman, spending 328 days in orbit.
First All-Female Spacewalks: While aboard the ISS, she conducted a total of six spacewalks, including the historic first three all-female spacewalks alongside fellow astronaut Jessica Meir.
Artemis II Lunar Mission (April 2026): Koch served as a mission specialist on the Artemis II mission. Launching on April 1, 2026, the crew successfully flew around the Moon and returned to Earth on April 10, 2026. With this mission, Koch became the first woman to travel beyond low Earth orbit and the first woman to journey around the Moon. The crew also broke the record for the farthest human distance traveled from Earth.