![\"Artemis](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/7f4f91672ac90446975a7417e1e5befb.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\nChristina Koch and the rest of the four-person Artemis II crew returned to Earth this past Friday, splashing down off the coast of San Diego after their historic 10-day lunar flyby mission.<\/p>\n
Now, Koch is getting readjusted to life on Earth.<\/p>\n
On Friday, Koch posted a video of herself going through physical therapy. The NASA astronaut explained that her “vestibular organs” are not working correctly due to her 10-day experience in microgravity.<\/p>\n
“Guess I\u2019ll be waiting a minute to surf again,” Koch wrote in an Instagram post.<\/p>\n
“When people live in microgravity, the systems in our body that have evolved to tell our brains how we\u2019re moving, the vestibular organs, don\u2019t work correctly. Our brains learn to ignore those signals and so when we first get back to gravity, we are heavily reliant on our eyes to orient ourselves visually,” she explained.<\/p>\n
“A tandem walk with eyes closed can be quite the challenge! Learning about this can help inform how we treat vertigo, concussions and other neuro-vestibular conditions on Earth,” she continued. “Luckily we\u2019re already adapting back to gravity at 7 days post-splashdown!”<\/p>\n
Koch and the Artemis II crew, including Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Jeremy Hansen, gathered a wealth of important research on their lunar flyby mission. They traveled further away from Earth than any humans in history, surpassing the previous record set by the Apollo 13 mission in 1970.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Koch addressed the public during a panel on Thursday, expressing gratitude for the world’s support of the Artemis II mission.<\/p>\n
\u201cI cannot overstate how important that was to us,\u201d Koch said. \u201cIt was every bit as important as accomplishing the technical goals and being there for our NASA teammates was to make this the world\u2019s mission.\u201d<\/p>\n
This story was originally published by Men’s Journal<\/a> on Apr 18, 2026, where it first appeared in the News<\/a> section. Add Men’s Journal as a Preferred Source by clicking here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Christina Koch and the rest of the four-person Artemis II crew returned to Earth this past Friday, splashing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":592892,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[196513,79,193,258630],"class_list":["post-592891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-christina-koch","tag-science","tag-space","tag-vestibular-organs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=592891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/592892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}