04/06/2026
On this day, 4 astronauts will travel around the moon, the farthest any human has been away from Earth. We are especially proud of the woman on board. Christina Koch, you are a trailblazer and you make us proud! Sending you lots of love and high-fives into outer space to you and your crew mates today.
In 1962, astronaut John Glenn told Congress that women's exclusion from space was simply "a fact of our social order." Today -- sixty-four years later -- NASA astronaut Christina Koch is strapped into the Orion spacecraft at Kennedy Space Center, preparing to become the first woman ever to travel beyond low Earth orbit and fly around the Moon. No one in history will have gone farther from our planet.
Koch is no stranger to making history. In 2019, she launched to the International Space Station for what was supposed to be a six-month mission. NASA extended her stay -- in part to collect more data on how women's bodies respond to long-duration spaceflight -- and she didn't come home for 328 days, shattering the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman.
"It is a wonderful thing for science," Koch said from the ISS. "We see another aspect of how the human body is affected by microgravity for the long term. That is really important for our future spaceflight plans, going forward to the moon and Mars."
In October of that year, she and fellow NASA astronaut Jessica Meir conducted the first all-female spacewalk -- an event that made headlines around the world, with millions of girls and women cheering them on. Koch went on to perform five more spacewalks, spending a total of 42 hours and 15 minutes outside the station. Her biggest hope for the duration record, she said at the time, was "that it is exceeded as soon as possible again, because that means we are continuing to push those boundaries."
Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan and raised in Jacksonville, North Carolina, Koch grew up with pictures of space on her bedroom walls "right next to the boy band posters." She earned bachelor's degrees in electrical engineering and physics and a master's in electrical engineering from North Carolina State University, then spent years conducting research at some of the most remote stations on Earth -- in the Arctic and Antarctic -- before being selected for NASA's 2013 astronaut class, the first with an equal number of male and female candidates.
Today's Artemis II mission -- a 10-day journey that will take Koch and crewmates Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen swinging around the far side of the Moon -- will send them farther from Earth than any human has ever traveled, surpassing the Apollo 13 distance record set in 1970.
For Koch, the mission is personal -- but it's not just about her. "We're at a time where we've recognized the importance of if we are not going for all and by all, we aren't truly answering all of humanity's call to explore," she said. "That to me is what's worth celebrating."
To watch a livestream of the launch, visit https://www.facebook.com/NASA/videos/2667741716946229
For a fascinating picture book about the first woman in history to ever go on a spacewalk, Kathy Sullivan, we highly recommend "To The Stars!" for ages 5 to 9 at https://www.amightygirl.com/to-the-stars
To introduce kids to real-life women space pioneers, we highly recommend "Galaxy Girls" for ages 7 to 12 (https://www.amightygirl.com/galaxy-girls), "Gutsy Girls Go For Science: Astronauts" for ages 8 to 11 (https://www.amightygirl.com/gutsy-girls-astronauts), and the graphic novel "Astronauts: Women on the Final Frontier" for ages 10 and up (https://www.amightygirl.com/astronauts-women-on-the-final-frontier)
For teen and adults, we recommend “Women In Space: 23 Stories of First Flights, Scientific Missions, and Ground-Breaking Adventures” for ages 13 and up at https://www.amightygirl.com/women-in-space
For picture books about more trailblazing women of NASA, we recommend "Margaret and the Moon" (https://www.amightygirl.com/margaret-and-the-moon) and "A Computer Called Katherine" (https://www.amightygirl.com/a-computer-called-katherine)
For more books and toys to encourage Mighty Girls with an interest in space, check out our blog post "Reach For The Stars: Books and Toys to Inspire Space-Loving Mighty Girls" at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=16848
