Artemis astronaut Christina Koch has a knack for making history. In recent years, she has been a part of First women spacewalk And she set the record for the longest solo spaceflight by a woman after she spent 328 days on the International Space Station. Now, Koch will become the first woman to fly to the moon.
last week, NASA revealed that Koch will be part of a four-person crew that will travel to the moon for the Artemis 2 mission, the first manned mission to the moon in more than 50 years. the Artemis mission 2 It will aim to confirm that NASA’s Orion spacecraft is operating as expected with a crew on board in deep space. During the roughly 10-day journey, the astronauts will not land on the Moon, but rather travel to the far side of the Moon more than 230,000 miles (370,150 kilometers) from Earth.
in Video on the NASA websiteKoch said that when she first found out she was being set in Artemis 2, she was in disbelief. Then I was filled with a sense of honor, responsibility and preparation.
“I’m ready to try to make everyone proud and achieve what this mission really means to all of humanity,” Koch said.
Koch will work as a task specialist, and supporting Artemis 2 with its extensive experience in engineering and space work. Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen will work alongside Koch, and NASA astronaut Reed Wiseman will be the commander of Artemis 2. NASA astronaut Victor Glover will be the mission pilot and become the first person of color to travel beyond Earth’s orbit.
Gizmodo spoke to Koch back in 2020 after she hired Koch Record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman. Since she was recently set for Artemis 2, we thought it would be interesting to revisit our conversation, which has been previously unpublished. At the time, Koch had been back on Earth for just over a month, but she was already longing to return to space one day while dreaming of becoming part of the Artemis missions.
Her dream came true.
The questions and answers have been edited for length and clarity.
Gizmodo: What was the strangest thing to you when you got back from space? Has that changed now that you’ve been back for over a month?
hut: definitely yes. It’s great that you’re past the one month milestone and you’ve changed so much. When I first came back, there were physical things that I had to get used to and also cultural and societal things that were completely new after a year. So, the funniest thing was moving my body weight. When I first landed, I could kind of walk, but not really. I had to have a lot of support to walk. But even more difficult was changing my position when I was sitting or lying down because, not only did my body feel heavy, it felt heavy in so many different ways. It felt like there were kind of weights hanging off different parts of the body where you might not expect them like kettle bells hanging from my elbows or something. And so, every time I went into motion, I would skip my strength and end up falling the other way or having to do another round standing up.
It was really funny getting used to it and it wasn’t what I expected. I thought it would feel heavy, very evenly. Learning to walk was also fun, because it feels weird as someone in their 40s having to relearn how to walk and get around and kind of feel like reactivating all those muscles and re-learning — that was funny.
And then of course, just seeing people again was really extraordinary. When I actually got out of the pod and looked around, I was completely freaked out for a second because there were more people standing ten feet around me that I had seen in the last 11 months combined. Just processing everyone’s faces and all the comments you get and chatting to new people, all of which was new to me at first, and it was really exciting too. I was so happy to see people. I was happy to see animals, like dogs, even little kids, because things like that — you don’t think about it, but you don’t see it for a whole year in a row and you realize how special all these different aspects of life are.
Gizmodo: I imagine you must have been involved in a lot of studies about how being in space affects you. Can you share a little about it?
hut: Yes. One of the cool things about being involved in the human spaceflight program right now is that some of the original, bigger questions have kind of been answered and addressed. One of the biggest things in the past was musculoskeletal atrophy that you mentioned, being in microgravity would normally cause that, but we’ve developed such great strategies and equipment that we don’t see very often. Now we’re able to kind of focus on some of the more subtle aspects of how the body interacts with microgravity and some of the inefficiencies that are there.
So, I mentioned neuroscience, and I have some really cool and interesting science that I’m working on. Some of them are very physical in that the sensors are actually placed on some of my neural nerve systems and some of my muscles providing evidence that these systems are working to measure whether they have the same response they had before my spaceflight. And then I do another really cool kind of, you could almost say cognitive type tests, where we see how my ability to orient in space has changed from living in a 3D environment for so long.
It’s really cool stuff and it really allows us to use the microgravity environment to understand the basics of how our bodies work. If we can never remove this variable of gravity, we can never see how that plays into the different things that we do in terms of, as I mentioned, orienting and maintaining our balance and even wayfinding and understanding our place in the space around us. Some of the other subtle things that I think are really neat are things like the little stabilizing muscles around the spine. I’m in one called spinal strength that uses some MRI tech to see how small but really important muscle groups are affected. Some of those muscle groups that might be a little more difficult to hit with some of our standard exercises. It’s fun to see how we learn more about the human body by being able to have the International Space Station as a research laboratory that can remove gravity from the equation.
Gizmodo: Why did you decide to be a research subject volunteer while you were in space?
hut: Well, this is an opportunity that is available to all astronauts. I kind of saw that as a huge responsibility and part of my job. If you’ve opted out of some of those, I feel like we haven’t been able to get the full benefit of a microgravity laboratory like the space station. We do science in many different areas. It’s not just human research, but that’s a big part of it. And in particular, the human research part of it also informs future spaceflight plans and allows our spaceflight planners to design missions to go deeper, like returning to the Moon this decade, and then, after that, take those lessons learned and continue to explore Mars and hopefully one day.
It’s a way we can contribute to the success of future space explorers and also bring the benefits back to Earth for things like medicine and basic research on the human body. For me, it was a no-brainer, and I think most of the astronauts who got on board are happy to be a part of such an amazing research.
Gizmodo: I made history as a woman. What do you think that? And what is the next step you would like women in space to take?
hut: I am still completely amazed at how grateful I am that the pioneers who came before me, my heroes, paved the way for me to do what I was able to do. I feel proud to be a part of the space program at this time where I can contribute. It’s the time when we decided we were going to go all in and by all, and that inviting everyone to the table and not ruling out a single innovative idea was the way we were going to be most successful with it. I also feel proud that what I’ve done can inspire the next generation, and I’m even looking forward to mentoring the next generation.
In terms of the future, I can’t wait to see the first female to put footprints on the moon. This will happen in this decade with the Artemis mission. And I think this achievement will be just a very important symbolic milestone for inspiring people of all shapes and sizes and races and genders that, If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish hard things. I look forward to a world where everyone has to work just as hard to achieve their dreams, and I see that world getting closer and closer to existence. I am really fortunate to have been just a small stepping stone on this path.
Gizmodo: Are you coming back?
hut: Well, I would absolutely love to get another flying assignment one day, and I hope to do so. It’s great to be able to finally give back and put all the years of training to work. Basically, I’ve always been excited about the direction NASA has taken in the years since I’ve been here. So, any task that is out there is one that I can see myself doing and that I would absolutely be honored to contribute to. For now, it looks like those may be returning to the space station. It could be on a commercial spacecraft, like one from Boeing or SpaceX, and hopefully one of those vehicles will be launched from Florida as soon as next year. This is an exciting time. Then also the launch of the Artemis mission on NASA’s Orion spacecraft, also from American soil, and back to the moon.
Obviously, these are just incredibly exciting missions that I think anyone in the Space Corps would be thrilled to be a part of.
Gizmodo: What do you think when you look at the stars now?
hutI was inspired by the stars and (these) Things that have made me feel small my entire life. In fact, I attribute it to one of theThe things that even inspired me to be an astronaut. When I look at the stars, I like to think about our place in the universe. What does it mean that we ended up on this planet together, how huge is everything around us, how did the Earth form, what does it mean from a spiritual point of view and from a philosophical point of view that we are here. Now, I think the added bonus is that I sometimes think, “I wonder if my friends are out there floating above the sky.”
Want to know more about humanity’s next giant leap into space? Check out our full coverage of NASA’s Artemis Moon Programthe new Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraftthe The Artemis 1 mission recently concluded around the moon Four members of the crew of Artemis 2And Artemis Moon suit from NASA and AxiomAnd the next Lunar Gate space station. And for more space trips in your life, stay tuned Twitter and custom bookmarking for Gizmodo Spaceflight page.
(tags for translation) Christina Koch