Christina Koch was a firefighter at the South Pole at -111°F before she ever applied to be an astronaut. That was maybe the fourth most interesting line on her resume. She grew up in North Carolina, got three degrees from NC State, and her first real job was building deep-space instruments at NASA.
Then she left for Antarctica. Spent three and a half years bouncing between the Arctic and Antarctic as a research scientist, including a full winter at the South Pole base. That means going months without sunlight or fresh food, with a crew of about 50 people and no way out until flights resume. While she was down there, she also joined the glacier search-and-rescue team.
After coming back, she went to Johns Hopkins and built instruments for two NASA missions (one of them is still orbiting Jupiter right now). She figured out how to start a tiny vacuum pump that NASA designed for a future Mars rover. Johns Hopkins nominated it for their Invention of the Year in 2009. Then she went back to the field. More time in Antarctica and a stretch up in Greenland. A government research station in northern Alaska, near the top of the world. Then she ran another one in American Samoa, near the equator.
In 2013, NASA selected her from 6,300 applicants. Eight people got in. Her first space mission was supposed to be a normal rotation on the International Space Station, but NASA extended it. She ended up staying 328 straight days and orbiting Earth 5,248 times, covering about 139 million miles (roughly 291 round trips to the Moon). Up there, she ran over 210 experiments, including tests of cancer drugs in zero gravity and 3D printers that can build structures close to human tissue. Six spacewalks, 42 hours floating outside the station. She learned Russian for the training. She flies supersonic jets.
Right now, Koch is on Artemis II, heading for a flyby behind the far side of the Moon. The crew launched on April 1 and is on track to travel about 252,000 miles from Earth, which would break the all-time human distance record of 248,655 miles set by Apollo 13 in 1970. That record has stood for 56 years, and it was set during a disaster that nearly killed the crew. Fred Haise, one of the Apollo 13 astronauts, is 92 now. He told Koch: "I heard you're going to break our record."
Nobody had left Earth's neighborhood since December 1972. Koch and her three crewmates are the first in 53 years, and they are coming home at about 25,000 mph. That is faster than any crewed spacecraft has ever come back through the atmosphere.
Part 2. Christina Koch is 200,000 miles from Earth right now. When she comes back, her spacecraft hits the atmosphere at 25,000 mph, and the outside heats up to 5,000°F, hot enough to melt steel twice over. The heat shield protecting her from all of that came back from its last flight, cracked in over 100 places. NASA kept the same one and changed the flight path instead.
Orion (the capsule they are riding in) flew one test run around the Moon in 2022 with no crew. When it splashed down, engineers found the protective coating on the bottom had broken apart in chunks. It was supposed to burn off slowly and evenly, absorbing heat so the inside stays cool. Instead the material trapped gas, pressure built up, and it cracked. Three of four bolts holding the capsule to the rest of the spacecraft had partially melted through. NASA's own internal watchdog flagged three different ways this could kill a crew.
The agency spent two years investigating, ran over 1,000 simulations, and changed how the capsule comes home. The original plan was to skip it off the atmosphere like a stone on water, bouncing in and out to slow down. That bouncing caused the temperature swings that cracked the coating. So they scrapped the skip. Now it plunges straight in, steeper and faster, spending less time in the heat but putting more force on the crew's bodies. A completely new shield does not fly until 2028.
Four people in 330 cubic feet (two minivans), 10 days. On the space station, astronauts have 4,000 pounds of gym equipment. Koch and her crew have a 30-pound device the size of a carry-on bag that works like a yo-yo, and they do squats and deadlifts on it. The toilet fan jammed on day one (in zero gravity, the fan is what pulls waste into the toilet). Koch flagged it, and Mission Control talked her through the fix. Apollo astronauts didn't even have a toilet, just bags taped to their bodies.
Twenty minutes after the engine fired to send them toward the Moon, a warning popped up: "cabin leak suspected." False alarm. But by that point, turning around was no longer the safer option. Finishing the loop was. On April 6, they fly within about 4,000 miles of the Moon and photograph parts of the far side no human has ever seen up close. Then four days coasting home.
Orion enters the atmosphere at about 25,000 mph, 32 times the speed of sound, faster than any crewed spacecraft has ever returned. Superhot gas wraps around the outside and kills all radio contact for several minutes. Nobody on the ground can reach them. A series of parachutes fire in sequence, and the capsule goes from 25,000 mph to 17 mph before dropping into the Pacific off San Diego. Atmosphere to water, about 20 minutes.
Victor Glover failed an engineering class his sophomore year of college. His dad talked him out of joining the Navy SEALs and told him an engineering degree and pilot wings might make him an astronaut someday. Right now Glover is somewhere between the Earth and the Moon.
He grew up in Pomona, California. Played quarterback in high school, wrestled well enough to place sixth at the state championship, won Athlete of the Year. Went to Cal Poly for engineering and played both sports at the college level.
He got his Navy wings in 2001 and started flying F/A-18 fighter jets off aircraft carriers. His squadron deployed on the USS John F. Kennedy to fight in Iraq, the carrier’s final deployment ever. Twenty-four combat missions. His commanding officer gave him the callsign “Ike,” short for “I Know Everything.”
He became a test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base and over his career flew more than 40 types of aircraft, 3,000 hours in the air, everything from a Korean War-era Soviet MiG-15 to the Goodyear blimp. More than 400 landings on a moving carrier deck. He earned three master’s degrees in three years. He once told Cal Poly’s president that the hardest thing he ever chose to do was walk in space. The second hardest was wrestling practice.
He applied to NASA in 2009 and got rejected. Applied again in 2013 while working in the U.S. Senate for John McCain. NASA’s head of flight crew operations called him. He missed the call. Frantically dialed back. Eight people got in that year out of more than 6,000 applicants.
NASA put him in the pilot seat for the first operational SpaceX Crew Dragon flight in 2020. He spent 168 days on the International Space Station and walked in space four times.
Last June he went back to Cal Poly to accept an honorary doctorate. His wife Dionna and their oldest daughter Genesis both walked across the stage at the same ceremony to pick up their own degrees.
Three days ago Glover launched from Kennedy Space Center. The crew will fly past the far side of the Moon on Monday and travel about 252,000 miles from home, breaking a distance record that Apollo 13 set fifty-six years ago. They come back at roughly 25,000 mph.
He has four daughters. His callsign is still Ike.
