4/4/23 - A Special Honor For A Grand Rapids Native

NASA's Artemis II flight around the moon will include a woman who was born in Grand Rapids, Mchigan.

NASA has selected four crew members to travel around the moon in its Artemis II mission that is planned for late 2024. 

The announcement was made at a media event Monday at the NASA Johnson Space Center’s Ellington Field in Houston, Texas.  

The four include: Victor Glover, Jeremy Hansen, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen. 

This mission will take the crew around the moon for the first time since humans have visited the moon in the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.   

Christina Hammock Koch was born in Grand Rapids and then moved to North Carolina but spent many summers at the family farm in Michigan. 

Koch was first selected to be an astronaut in 2013 and completed three missions on the International Space Station in 2019 and 2020. She made history when she recorded the longest single spaceflight by a woman totaling 328 days in space. She was also part of the first all-female space walks which took place while on the ISS.  

“We’re not going to go to the moon right away,” Koch said. “We’re gonna stay in an amazing high orbit, reaching a peak of tens of thousands of miles while we test out all systems on Orion and even see how it maneuvers in space. And then if everything looks good, we’re heading to the moon.”  

The mission will take place late in 2024.