{"id":609714,"date":"2026-04-17T06:59:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T06:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/609714\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T06:59:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T06:59:10","slug":"astronaut-christina-koch-on-artemis-ii-and-the-outdoors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/609714\/","title":{"rendered":"Astronaut Christina Koch on Artemis II and the Outdoors"},"content":{"rendered":"

Published April 16, 2026 04:27PM<\/p>\n

On April 10, my family and I sat around the kitchen table, eating tacos and watching a livestream of the four Artemis II astronauts return from their mission around the moon. When the capsule carrying them, which they\u2019d named Integrity, splashed down off the San Diego coast, I felt tears form. And as NASA workers sent boats out to ensure everyone was safe and inflated the raft, \u201cthe front porch,\u201d on which the Artemis II crew would sit when they exited, my husband, four-year-old son, one-year-old daughter, and I kept our eyes glued to my phone, propped up on a jar of salsa.<\/p>\n

\u201cMom, should we go to the moon?\u201d my son asked me.<\/p>\n

We were only four of 27 million watching the historic event. Over the previous ten days, Christina Koch, Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Jeremy Hansen broke the record for the farthest distance from Earth ever reached by humans\u2014an astonishing 252,756 miles\u2014as they orbited the moon, discovering and naming a new crater, testing new communication technology, and marking the first moon mission in more than 50 years. NASA livestreamed much of the adventure, which lasted 9 days, 1 hour, 31 minutes, and 35 seconds.<\/p>\n

Unlike 50 years ago, news and discourse spread about the mission all over social media. The phrase \u201cmoon joy<\/a>\u201d started trending after Angela Garcia, a science officer at NASA, relayed to the crew that she \u201ccopied\u201d their moon joy. Stunning photography of the Earth from space<\/a>, photos of the four crewmates embracing, and poetic descriptions of the moon and planet by the crew went viral<\/a>.<\/p>\n

My favorite photo of the bunch depicted Koch looking down at Earth through a window on her way to the moon. She\u2019s surrounded by darkness, and her face is illuminated by the glow of the blue marble sphere in front of her. A braid floats away from her head, and her caption on Instagram reads, \u201cFirst braids to leave Earth orbit. (unconfirmed)\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

While the entire crew made history in the distance they traveled from the planet, Koch broke another record<\/a> on the Artemis II mission: she became the first woman to orbit the moon. It\u2019s not the only record she holds, either. Koch embarked on the first all-female spacewalk in history on October 18, 2019. And she holds the record for the longest spaceflight by a woman, which she set over the span of 328 days throughout 2019 and into 2020.<\/p>\n

When she\u2019s not exploring space, Koch likes to explore Earth. She\u2019s a rock and ice climber<\/a>, backpacker, and surfer. She competes in triathlons and practices yoga. She likes woodworking, photography, and travel.<\/p>\n

I interviewed Koch after the Artemis II mission. I asked her about space exploration and how it compares to adventuring here on Earth, the Earth smell she missed most on her mission, and if space food is better than backpacking meals. Here\u2019s what she had to say.<\/p>\n

The First Woman to Orbit the Moon: An Interview with Christina Koch<\/p>\n

How rock climbing prepared her for space: \u201cIt\u2019s communication with a partner. It\u2019s understanding the gear and the physics. It\u2019s pushing yourself mentally and physically.\u2029And I think the most important aspect is that it helped me turn fear into focus. Doing trad climbing, when you\u2019re not necessarily en route, and there\u2019s no one up there to save you but yourself, can definitely make you find the zone and be able to push through, rely on your training, and recognize that the ultimate thing to focus on is just what you know and that you can do this.\u201d<\/p>\n

The greatest similarity between exploring Earth on foot and from up in space: \u201cOne-hundred percent, it is being willing to put in the work to see things you cannot see otherwise. Climbing Mount Whitney, climbing Mount Kenya, seeing these places that are absolutely spectacular, and you\u2019ve chosen to do the hard thing because it\u2019s worth it. That is the parallel that I want to highlight.\u201d<\/p>\n

Freeze-dried backpacking meals or freeze-dried space meals: \u201cDefinitely space food.\u2029The packaging is just a little bit more efficient. They\u2019re both great, but some of the packaging of the backpacker food, there\u2019s a lot there.\u201d<\/p>\n

What a space mission can teach about endurance: \u201cI used to be a runner and did a lot of running races. And in comparison, they\u2019re challenging in their own way, but they seem so simple compared to a triathlon. You don\u2019t have to get your gear in every single transition ready. You have one thing to think about in the morning. Triathlons are all about task switching, making sure that every single thing you prepare for, and you\u2019re ready to move from one to the other. And I think that about endurance as well. One foot in front of the other. You will get to the end eventually, and you\u2019re halfway through that bike, and you still have that run in front of you, but you\u2019re not necessarily focused on that at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

The most magical: space vs. Earth: \u201cEarth is more magical to me. Earth has beautiful sounds. I fell asleep last night in my backyard. I just passed out for like two hours because we\u2019re tired. We came back from space. Our bodies were adjusting. And when I woke up, it was to the sound of birds and a little tiny bit of sunlight still on my face. And it was the most magical thing to wake up to. I\u2019m truly inspired by nature. I\u2019m one of the most outdoors-motivated people that I know. I always want to eat every meal outside. I want to live my life in outdoor spaces. And it is because of that magic. But there\u2019s one thing that\u2019s true, which is that when we behold Earth from space, it is as beautiful as those alpine vistas. It\u2019s as beautiful as the wildlife that we see. Something in us loves seeing planet Earth because there is something magical about looking back on your home from space.\u201d<\/p>\n

The one smell from Earth Koch missed most while in orbit: \u201cDefinitely the beach. Pretty much every outdoor smell is beautiful, but the beach was the one that I went to first when I got home. I do live at the beach. There\u2019s something about that mixing of the water and the sand that is just, you can\u2019t replicate that. Something about the way it carries in the wind that is truly beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Iconic outdoor recreation places Koch spotted from space: \u201cOn my first mission, I looked at all of those things. I had almost a year. I had every single season.\u2029I had all of Earth in every season, and that was really cool. On this mission, when we were coming back in from 38,000 feet away, the highest part of our orbit when we hadn\u2019t left Earth yet, and we were coming into perigee\u2014the lowest point, only 100 miles above Earth, to then do our Translunar Injection burn\u2014we came in the entire time over Australia. And I was the first one to recognize that it was Australia from really far away because of that huge bay that\u2019s like a square cut out of the north, and I said, \u2018I think that is the continent of Australia.\u2019 As we got closer, it certainly was. I knew that there was a big surf championship happening there right now, and I just watched that whole coastline. I imagined what it was like to be there. I surfed there about a year ago, and it was phenomenal.\u201d<\/p>\n

How being totally disconnected from Earth for a 37-minute communication blackout made her feel: \u201cResponsibility and fulfillment of that responsibility, because that was when we were doing the most science. It was when we had all of our targets. We had to observe; we had certain things that the science team had lined out for us that we had to understand. And just like you might observe geology when you\u2019re in the backcountry\u2014and is that a U-shaped valley from a glacier or a V-shaped valley from a river?\u2014you\u2019re thinking about what created all these things. What can we know about our universe and our solar system\u2019s formation from these observations? So we were just so focused. I would say that Earthset and Earthrise, the two moments that punctuated that loss of communication, were poignant, but in between, we were just all business.\u201d<\/p>\n

On yoga in space: \u201cI didn\u2019t have as much space as on my first mission. And my first mission, I would do yoga, and I would just float for a long period of time in big modules and just allow myself to float all around. But I had a little bit of space. I would go up in the docking tunnel, and I could do bow, and I could do forward fold\u2014just grabbing my heels\u2014and it felt great. It was amazing to just get out of the standard hunched-over zero-gravity posture and just stretch and take in everything that yoga gives us, every gift that that practice gives us.\u201d<\/p>\n

One takeaway Koch hopes we remember from the Artemis II mission: \u201cThat we still choose Earth. That we don\u2019t leave Earth because we don\u2019t love it. We don\u2019t leave Earth because we don\u2019t accept the responsibility of taking care of it. That it\u2019s our home. That it\u2019s the one thing that keeps us all alive together. It represents our common needs.\u2029It represents our common cares. It represents our common love. And we choose Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published April 16, 2026 04:27PM On April 10, my family and I sat around the kitchen table, eating…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":609715,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[168574,49,48,60566,66,306,60569,62576,229803,54267],"class_list":{"0":"post-609714","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-audio-true","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-parent_category-adventure","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-space","14":"tag-tag-climbing","15":"tag-tag-evergreen","16":"tag-tag-space","17":"tag-type-article"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=609714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609714\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/609715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=609714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=609714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=609714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}