December 1, 2023
Colloquium Topic: Human Spaceflight: A mission to ISS by a former APLer
Please join us for this presentation by NASA Astronaut Christina Koch, who was recently selected as one of 18 astronauts to form the Artemis Team. She will be discussing her experiences as an astronaut on board the International Space Station for expeditions 59, 60, and 61. While on the ISS, in addition to contributing to hundreds of experiments in biology, Earth science, human research, physical science, and technology development, she set the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman and conducted six spacewalks, including the first three all-women spacewalks.
Colloquium Speaker: Christina Koch
Christina Hammock Koch, a native of Grand Rapids, Michigan, grew up in Jacksonville, North Carolina, and resided in Livingston, Montana, before relocating to Houston, Texas, to join the Astronaut Corps. She was selected as an astronaut by NASA in 2013 and completed astronaut candidate training in 2015. She most recently served as flight engineer on the International Space Station (ISS) for Expeditions 59, 60, and 61. While aboard the ISS, she and her crewmates contributed to hundreds of experiments in biology, Earth science, human research, physical science and technology development. Koch set a record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman with a total of 328 days in space. She also conducted six spacewalks, including the first three all-women spacewalks.
Koch’s career prior to becoming an astronaut spanned both space science instrument development for Goddard Space Flight Center and the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and remote scientific field engineering for the U.S. Antarctic Program and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). She is currently serving in a rotational position as the director’s assistant for technical integration at NASA Johnson Space Center.
Koch holds a B.S. in electrical engineering, a B.S. in physics and an M.S. in electrical engineering from North Carolina State University.