“I didn't have a lot of space to write songs for women so I purposefully tried to write songs that men could record.”
Christina Koch has spent years preparing for one of the most historic spaceflights in decades. Now, she is on the verge of making it happen.
Koch is a mission specialist on Artemis II, a planned round-the-moon mission that will make her the first woman to travel beyond low Earth orbit. The mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than April 1, with liftoff set for 6:24 p.m. ET, per NASA’s live countdown.
A Crew Making History
The 10-day mission will send four astronauts around the Moon and back, testing the Orion spacecraft with its first human crew. Joining Koch are NASA commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover and mission specialist Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency.
The flight is packed with firsts. Koch is set to become the first woman to travel beyond low Earth orbit. Glover will become the first Black person to leave low Earth orbit, and Hansen the first non-American to do so.
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The mission includes testing in Earth orbit followed by a trans-lunar injection maneuver to travel around the Moon and return. Artemis II is part of NASA’s Artemis program and is intended to support future crewed lunar missions.
Built for the Challenge
Koch’s path to this mission has been shaped by years of demanding work. She was selected as part of NASA’s 2013 astronaut class and has worked in engineering and research roles at NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Before becoming an astronaut, she worked in remote research environments including Antarctica.
She previously spent 328 days aboard the International Space Station from 2018 to 2020. During that time, she also participated in the first all-woman spacewalk with Jessica Meir.
In Her Own Words
In a 2025 interview with Space.com, Koch reflected on what it means to be part of this crew and the broader team behind the mission.
“It feels like an incredible privilege and responsibility [to be on Artemis 2],” Koch said. “As a crew, I feel like we consolidated really quickly. That’s just a set of values that we’ve all developed living in the astronaut corps for so many years, and so we felt crew-like very quickly.”
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She described the energy building across the wider teams supporting the flight.
“But what has happened in the last few months, for me, is the consolidation and momentum that’s building in the wider team — the flight control team, the launch control team,” she said. “We are firing on all cylinders with those guys doing problem solving [and] answering questions that no one knows the real answer to. Every person that walks into every room is just ready to contribute the most that they can, and to get to the right answer as a team. And it has been awesome.”
Koch emphasized that the crew’s success depends on the people behind the scenes.
“For me, it’s bigger than [our crew]. There’s levels,” she said. “Obviously, our crew cohesion and the respect we have from each other — for each other — is so important to get the job done, to get the mission done as successfully as possible, and [as] safely as possible. And building that out to a wider team, to me, is just as important, if not more important. I think we stand on their shoulders. We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for our wider teams.”
She also spoke about what the mission represents beyond any single milestone.
“I think for me, [Artemis 2] comes down to not being any single individual’s accomplishments,” Koch said. “The accomplishment that we can celebrate together is that we got here. Decades ago, we made the right decisions so that our astronaut corps brings diverse backgrounds together to solve the hardest problems. And that, to me, is what’s truly worth celebrating, and what I’m honored to be a part of.”
