HOUSTON — Christina Koch, who already has a storied career of firsts since becoming a NASA astronaut in 2013, will fly around the Moon during the Artemis-II mission in 2024.
Koch was the first of four astronauts announced during a special ceremony in Houston Monday. Artemis-II will be the first Artemis mission to carry humans.
The mission marks the first time in 50 years astronauts have been assigned to a moon mission following the 1972 return of Apollo 17. Artemis-II includes the first woman and the first African American assigned to a lunar mission.
With Artemis-III in the years ahead, NASA intends to put the first person of color and the first woman on the lunar's surface.
For Artemis-II, Koch, will serve as the mission specialist. Mission specialist astronauts work with pilots to maintain spacecraft and equipment, conduct experiments and launch satellites, according to Purdue University. Mission specialists may be engineers, scientists or physicians.
Koch is a native of Grand Rapids, Michigan and grew up in Jacksonville, North Carolina.
Koch attended high school at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics in Durham, North Carolina, and White Oak High School in Jacksonville, North Carolina. She studied at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina, where she earned Bachelor of Science degrees in Electrical Engineering and Physics and a Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering. She received an Honorary Ph.D. from NC State.
Her career began as an electrical engineer at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Koch participated in the NASA Academy program at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in 2001 and later became an electrical engineer at the facility.
She was selected in 2013 as one of eight members of the 21st NASA astronaut class and completed astronaut candidate training in 2015. In 2018, she was assigned to her first space flight, a long-duration mission on the International Space Station.
She served as flight engineer on Expedition missions 59, 60 and 61 when she flew on the space shuttle to the space station. Koch set a record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman with a total of 328 days in space and participated in the first all-female spacewalks
Koch will fly with NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen on Artemis-II. A crew for Artemis-III has not yet been announced.
NASA and the Associated Press contributed to this report