{"id":227119,"date":"2026-04-11T01:50:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T01:50:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/227119\/"},"modified":"2026-04-11T01:50:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T01:50:07","slug":"jacksonville-nasa-astronaut-christina-koch-returns-home-after-historic-lunar-mission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/227119\/","title":{"rendered":"Jacksonville NASA astronaut Christina Koch returns home after historic lunar mission"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">JACKSONVILLE, N.C. (WITN) &#8211; NASA astronaut Christina Koch of Jacksonville is one of four astronauts who have safely returned home aboard the Orion spacecraft following a historic lunar mission.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">WITN visited her former high school, White Oak High School, to hear how this mission is inspiring future astronauts to picture themselves among the stars.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Koch\u2019s legacy is still present at the high school and has been at the forefront of students\u2019 and staff\u2019s minds over the last 10 days.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cThe kids are glued to the TVs. There\u2019s recaps going on, and I think the media coverage of this is far different than Apollo as well. It\u2019s constant. There\u2019s always something being played on the NASA YouTube livestream, and so they\u2019ve been watching that and pretty much everything new that pops up, they pause and take a listen,\u201d said Brandon Dillman, Onslow County Schools science coordinator.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Dillman says the splashdown was the most critical part of the mission, and unlike launch, there is no wiggle room, as there is only one chance to land safely.<\/p>\n<p class=\"copyright |\">Copyright 2026 WITN. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, N.C. (WITN) &#8211; NASA astronaut Christina Koch of Jacksonville is one of four astronauts who have safely&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":227120,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[16924,97642,48493,72502,97486,116,118,117,17649,11969,4481,1854,102291,4480],"class_list":{"0":"post-227119","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-artemis","9":"tag-artemis-2","10":"tag-artemis-ii","11":"tag-astronaut","12":"tag-christina-koch","13":"tag-jacksonville","14":"tag-jacksonville-headlines","15":"tag-jacksonville-news","16":"tag-mission","17":"tag-nasa","18":"tag-nc","19":"tag-north-carolina","20":"tag-white-oak-high-school","21":"tag-witn"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}