NASA Astronaut Christina Koch Breaks History- Returns After 328 Days Spent In Space

After spending 328 days on the International Space Station, "the longest amount of time any woman astronaut has been in space on an ongoing basis" Christina Koch of NASA admits that she is happy to set foot on solid soil.

Last week in an interview, Koch said she was keen to experience some very simple pleasures now that she is back on Earth. "The feeling of wind on my face".

If there is anything she lacks in the orbiting space lab about her days, it would be "her crewmates ' relationship" and "The spectacular views,"

Koch was launched on 14 March 2019 shuttle along with fellow NASA astronaut Nick Hague and the Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin. Her 328-day space mission was also her first space journey and any American astronaut's second-longest space flight, which puts her seventh on the list of the total combined time American astronauts spend on one or more flights in space.

Christina Koch is helped out of the Soyuz MS-13 spacecraft minutes after she, Roscosmos Alexander Skvortsov, and ESA Luca Parmitano, land near Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan.

Supporting NASA's ambitions for future human landings on the Moon, Koch completed 5,248 Earth orbits and a 139 million-mile flight, roughly the equivalent of 291 Moon and Back journeys. Over 11 months she did six spacewalks on earth, including the first three all-woman spacewalks, logging 42 hours and 15 minutes outside the station.

In her 11-month stay, Koch participated in performing six "spacewalks" among them, three of history's first all-woman spacewalks. She also saw a dozen visiting spacecraft arrive and a dozen of them exit the space station in her time there.

Koch, who is both a brilliant physicist and a keen science subject, has completed an extended space mission for NASA researchers to study the effects of sustained spaceflight on a woman's health and wellbeing. This is something NASA is (just as space agencies all over the world are) keen on exploring. NASA has plans to return humans to the Moon with the Artemis program, slated for 2025. With Artemis, NASA will land what would be the first woman astronaut in the world to set foot on the Moon, and eventually, Mars.

Although it is easy to see how fast Koch could become a role model figure for young women and girls all over the world. Both Koch and her fellow astronaut Jessica Mier who accompanied Koch on the all-woman spacewalk are aware of their impact. "We also drew a lot of inspiration from seeing people who focused on themselves when we grew up, and creating our visions of becoming astronauts," Koch said in an interview after the walk from space. "Diversity matters, and that's something worth fighting for."

That said, it could easily be the least significant thing about Koch's gender. An electrical engineer and a degree in physics from North Carolina, Koch's pre-astronaut career was rooted in the development of space science instruments and engineering for remote scientific fields such as Antarctica and Alaska. Her research at the space station involved studying how protein crystals grow in space and their potential use in treating Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.