NASA has announced the astronaut crew for the Artemis II manned mission to the moon, and this flight will have an engineer on board! Christina Hammock Koch was named to the four-person crew as a mission specialist, along with commander Reis Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialist Jeremy Hansen.
I have a special interest in Christina’s selection as she is a graduate of North Carolina State University, where I taught and received my PhD, and I had the pleasure to meet her last year at the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation’s Innovators Gala. I sat at the same table along with other members of the Atermis team who were preparing for the launch of Artemis I. Such an amazing group of people!
Christina has had an impressive career as an electrical engineer and astronaut, and she is a fantastic representative of the engineering profession in space. She started her career as an engineer at NASA and also worked in the Arctic and Antarctica before being selected for the NASA Astronaut program in 2013. Christina has more hours in space than any other woman with multiple space walks under her belt, and holds the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman. She actually has the most time in space of the Artemis II crew.
I don’t think they could have made a better choice, and I am excited to follow her experience with the Artemis II mission. She is one engineer who is achieving her extraordinary in a very big way. – Dr. Tom
