Christina Koch

Did You Know?

• On Artemis II, Koch photographed Earthset, showing the Earth appearing to set behind the lunar surface.
• Koch and her husband met at a Halloween party in American Samoa.

Early life and education

Christina Hammock, the eldest of four children, was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on January 29, 1979. Her mother, Barbara Johnsen, and father, Ronald Hammock, met while both worked at a Kalamazoo hospital. As a baby, her family relocated to Dearborn, Michigan, and then moved again in 1982 to Jacksonville, North Carolina, where she grew up. Each summer, she returned to her maternal grandfather’s farm in Sparta, Michigan, to work the fields alongside younger relatives.

Her grandparents often told her, “You’ve got to work hard to make it happen because if you don’t, it won’t,” a lesson both she and her mother credit for her strong work ethic. From a young age, she dreamed of becoming an astronaut, decorating her wall with images of space and Antarctica clipped from National Geographic magazines. She attended Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama, at least five times. After a short period at White Oak High School, she graduated from the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics in Durham in 1997.

During the 1999/2000 academic year, she studied astrophysics through an exchange program at the University of Ghana, Legon. She then earned bachelor’s degrees in electrical engineering and physics in 2001, followed by a master’s in electrical engineering in 2002, all from North Carolina State University. In 2001, she completed the NASA Academy program at Goddard Space Flight Center. Outside academics, she contributed photos to the Technician and volunteered with Habitat for Humanity and Engineers Without Borders.

Research and training

After graduating from the NASA Academy program in 2001, Koch worked as an electrical engineer in the Laboratory for High Energy Astrophysics at Goddard Space Flight Center from 2002 to 2004, contributing to scientific instruments for NASA missions studying astrophysics and cosmology. During this period she also served as adjunct faculty at Montgomery College in Maryland, leading a physics laboratory course. From 2004 to 2007 she worked as a research associate in the United States Antarctic Program, spending three and a half years in the Arctic and Antarctic regions.

She completed a winter-over season at the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station, where temperatures reached −111 °F, and an additional season at Palmer Station. While in Antarctica she served on firefighting teams and ocean/glacier search‑and‑rescue teams. From 2007 to 2009 she worked as an electrical engineer in the Space Department of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, contributing to instruments for NASA missions including Juno and Van Allen Probes.

She then completed tours at Palmer Station and multiple winter seasons at Summit Station in Greenland. In 2012 she joined the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, first as a field engineer at the Global Monitoring Division Baseline Observatory in Barrow, Alaska (now Utqiaġvik), and later as station chief of the American Samoa Observatory.

Astronaut career

In June 2013 Koch was selected by NASA as part of Astronaut Group 21, one of four NASA astronauts born in the Grand Rapids metropolitan area. She completed her training in July 2015, which included scientific and technical briefings, instruction in International Space Station systems, spacewalks, robotics, physiological training, T-38 flight training, and water and wilderness survival training. On March 14, 2019, she launched to the ISS aboard Soyuz MS-12 with Aleksey Ovchinin and Nick Hague for Expeditions 59/60/61.

Her first scheduled spacewalk on March 29 would have been the first all‑female spacewalk with Anne McClain, but spacesuit sizing constraints led to McClain being replaced by Nick Hague. On October 18, 2019, Koch performed the first all‑female spacewalk with Jessica Meir, and they conducted two additional all‑female spacewalks in January 2020. Her mission was extended to February 2020 due to Commercial Crew Development reassignment schedules, and she returned to Earth on February 6 after 328 days in space, the longest single spaceflight by a woman.

During the mission she made the first edit to Wikipedia from space to describe her own spacewalk. Koch was selected for NASA's Artemis program and on April 3, 2023, was announced as a mission specialist for Artemis II. The mission launched on April 1, 2026, flew by the Moon on April 6, traveling 6,400 miles beyond the Moon's far side, and returned to Earth on April 10, 2026. She became the first woman to leave low Earth orbit and to fly around the Moon, and during the flyby she photographed Earthset.

Awards and honors

Koch’s career has earned her many honors, starting with an Astronaut Scholarship in 2000 and including two NASA Group Achievement Awards—one in 2005 for work on the Suzaku X-ray Spectrometer and another in 2012 for the Juno mission’s Jupiter Energetic Particle Detector. She was also a nominee for Johns Hopkins APL’s Invention of the Year in 2009 and received the Antarctic Service Medal with Winter-Over distinction in 2005. Her alma mater, NCSU, granted her an honorary Doctor of Sciences in December 2020, and that same year Time named her one of the 100 Most Influential People. In 2026 she won the Princess of Asturias Award for Concord. That August, NCSU renamed its Engineering Building II to Koch Hall and debuted a limited-edition Howling Cow ice cream flavor, Howl at the Moon. Four days later, Koch and the Artemis II crew were awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.