Christina Koch is an American engineer and astronaut. Selected by NASA in 2013, she first gained global attention during a nearly yearlong mission aboard the International Space Station, where she set the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman and helped carry out the first all-female spacewalks.
In 2026, Koch stepped beyond Earth’s neighborhood entirely as a mission specialist on Artemis II, humanity’s first crewed journey around the Moon in over half a century. The mission flew farther from Earth than any humans before, and Koch became the first woman to travel beyond low Earth orbit and circle the Moon. Orion spacecraft carried her and her crewmates on a nine-day arc through deep space, testing life-support systems and returning safely in April 2026—an achievement that helped reopen the path to the lunar surface and, eventually, Mars.
