Christina Koch

Christina Koch was born in 1979 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and raised in Jacksonville, North Carolina. She earned bachelor's degrees in both electrical engineering and physics, followed by a master's in electrical engineering, all from North Carolina State University. Before becoming an astronaut she built and operated scientific instruments — working at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center on space science hardware and then serving long tours at some of Earth's most isolated research outposts, including the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station and Palmer Station in Antarctica. That combination of engineering skill and proven endurance in extreme, remote environments made her a strong candidate, and NASA selected her as an astronaut in 2013.

Koch's first spaceflight became one of the most consequential of her generation. Launching aboard Soyuz MS-12 on March 14, 2019, she served as a flight engineer across Expeditions 59, 60, and 61, and stayed aloft for 328 days — the longest single spaceflight ever completed by a woman. During that mission, on October 18, 2019, she and Jessica Meir conducted the first all-female spacewalk, and Koch logged six spacewalks in total. She returned to Earth on February 6, 2020. In 2023 NASA named her to the crew of Artemis II, and in April 2026 she flew that mission aboard the Orion spacecraft — the first crewed voyage to the Moon since Apollo 17 in 1972 — making her the first woman ever to journey to the Moon as the capsule looped around the far side before returning home.

Koch's records have reshaped expectations for who undertakes humanity's most demanding journeys. As the holder of the women's single-spaceflight endurance record, a participant in the first all-female spacewalk, and the first woman to travel to the Moon, she has become a defining figure of the Artemis era and a widely recognized advocate for women in science and engineering. Now an active NASA astronaut following her Artemis II flight, she continues to represent the agency's push back to deep space. Her guiding phrase — do the thing you think you cannot do — captures a career built on volunteering for the hardest and most remote assignments available.