At NASA, “We used to say, it’s a marathon, not a sprint, but in my case we said: it’s an ultra-marathon, not a marathon,” she told about his eleven months spent aboard the International Space Station.
The 41-year-old astronaut landed on the steppes of Kazakhstan in Central Asia on February 6 with his colleagues, Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency and the Russian cosmonaut Alexandre Skvortsov.
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“I had to get used to walking again,” laughed Christina Koch, also noting: “During my first two minutes back on Earth, I saw more faces than in a year!”
This American engineer had already made history by participating in the first 100% female spacewalk, which she had done in October 2019 with Jessica Meir, a marine biologist.
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“I think these milestones motivate people and that it is important to recognize them,” she noted, while ensuring “not to have thought about it too much” once in space. “It was only a matter of time before this happened,” she added, recalling that her promotion to astronaut was joint.
To make the most of the 223 million km traveled, the equivalent of 291 round trips to the Moon, Christina Koch explained that she was “focused on the things we have” in space and “that we ‘will never be again’ once back on Earth.
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During her mission, she participated in more than 210 scientific studies and was herself the subject of experiments aiming to observe “the effects of a long-duration space trip on a woman”, specifies the NASA, which prepares the return of American astronauts to the Moon from 2024, and perhaps on Mars in the decade to come.
The mission of Christina Koch, who made six space excursions, including the first three entirely female, was the second longest solo space trip among NASA astronauts, the record being held by Scott Kelly, who spent 340 days of streaked on the ISS before returning to Earth in 2016.
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