Who Is Christina Koch? Everything You Need to Know About the Artemis 2 Astronaut
NASA’s Artemis II mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than April 1, and when it does, one crew member will become the first woman to travel beyond low Earth orbit. That astronaut is Christina Koch, a mission specialist on the 10-day flight around the moon.
Liftoff is scheduled for 6:24 p.m. ET, per NASA’s live countdown. The mission will test the Orion spacecraft with its first human crew.
What Is the Artemis 2 Mission?
Artemis II will send four astronauts on a 10-day flight around the moon and back. The mission includes testing in Earth orbit followed by a trans-lunar injection maneuver to travel around the moon and return to Earth.
It is part of NASA’s Artemis program and is intended to support future crewed lunar missions.
Who Is on the Artemis 2 Crew?
The four-person crew includes NASA commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialists Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency and Koch.
The flight marks several firsts. Koch will become the first woman to travel beyond low Earth orbit. Glover will become the first Black person to leave low Earth orbit, and Hansen will become the first non-American to do so.
What is Christina Koch’s Background at NASA?
Koch was selected as part of NASA’s 2013 astronaut class. She has worked in engineering and research roles at NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Before becoming an astronaut, she worked in remote research environments, including Antarctica.
Her spaceflight experience already includes 328 days aboard the International Space Station from 2018 to 2020. She also participated in the first all-woman spacewalk with Jessica Meir.
What has Christina Koch Said About Artemis 2?
In a 2025 interview with Space.com, Koch described the mission as “an incredible privilege and responsibility.”
“As a crew, I feel like we consolidated really quickly,” she said. “That’s just a set of values that we’ve all developed living in the astronaut corps for so many years, and so we felt crew-like very quickly.”
She said momentum has been building across the wider team in recent months — the flight control and launch control teams working alongside the astronauts.
“Every person that walks into every room is just ready to contribute the most that they can, and to get to the right answer as a team. And it has been awesome,” Koch said.
She described the mission as a collective achievement rather than an individual one.
“I think for me, [Artemis 2] comes down to not being any single individual’s accomplishments,” she said. “The accomplishment that we can celebrate together is that we got here. Decades ago, we made the right decisions so that our astronaut corps brings diverse backgrounds together to solve the hardest problems. And that, to me, is what’s truly worth celebrating, and what I’m honored to be a part of.”
Koch added that crew cohesion extends well beyond the four people aboard Orion.
“Obviously, our crew cohesion and the respect we have from each other — for each other — is so important to get the job done, to get the mission done as successfully as possible, and [as] safely as possible,” she said. “And building that out to a wider team, to me, is just as important, if not more important. I think we stand on their shoulders. We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for our wider teams.”
This article was created by content specialists using various tools, including AI.
