‘We’re Headed for the Moon’
For immediate release ‐ April 06, 2023
Contact: Jon Pishney, 919.707.8083. Images available upon request
Three-time NC State graduate Christina Koch has been selected as one of four crew members for NASA’s Artemis II and will become the first woman to fly to and around the moon.
The crew of NASA’s Artemis II mission, from left to right, NASA astronauts Christina Hammock Koch and Victor Glover, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, and NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman. Photo: James Blair/NASA.
By Tim Peeler, NCSU News
Just after Christina Koch learned last month that she had been selected for NASA’s Artemis II project — becoming the first woman to travel around the moon and back as part of a four-member crew — the pioneering NASA astronaut and three-time NC State graduate was told to limit sharing the news to only a few family and friends.
She informed just one person: her husband, Robert. She told him later that night, as they were walking along Galveston Beach in Texas, with the intention of sharing the news underneath the blanket of stars and moon that she had dreamed of visiting her whole life.
Unfortunately, it was too cloudy to see deeply into the night sky, but that didn’t dampen the excitement for the world’s most accomplished female space traveler.
The longtime Jacksonville, North Carolina, resident did not tell her family here until late Sunday, the night before NASA’s highly coordinated reveal party in Houston, which included all 18 Artemis astronauts in training, administrators from both the U.S. and Canadian space agencies and an auditorium full of Houston-area schoolkids.
Read the full story on NCSU News
Koch spoke at Astronomy Days at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences January 28-29.
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