Christina Hammock Koch ( KUUK; née Hammock; born January 29, 1979) is an American engineer and NASA astronaut. On her mission to the International Space Station in 2019–20 she was part of the first all‑female spacewalk and set the record for the longest spaceflight by a woman. On the Artemis II lunar flyby mission in April 2026, which set the record for human distance from Earth, Koch became the only woman to travel beyond low Earth orbit, and to travel around the Moon.
Before joining the NASA Astronaut Corps, Koch worked at the Goddard Space Flight Center and served as station chief for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's American Samoa Observatory.
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