Christina Hammock Koch, an American engineer and NASA astronaut of the class of 2013, recently broke American astronaut Peggy Whitson’s previous record of 288 days of spaceflight. Having spent a total of 328 days on the International Space Station, she was just 12 days short of Scott Kelly’s all-time record of 340 days in space, placing her seventh on the list of American space travelers with the most time in space. Koch launched in March 2019 with NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin and landed on 6 Feb 2020 with European Space Agency's astronaut Luca Parmitano and cosmonaut Alexader Skvortskov. During her space mission, Koch participated in experiments that will provide researchers the opportunity to observe the effects of long-duration spaceflight on a woman. This will directly benefit NASA’s plans to land the first woman and the next man on the Moon under the Artemis program and prepare for human exploration of Mars. She conducted six spacewalks during her 11 months on orbit, including the first three all-woman spacewalks, spending 42 hours and 15 minutes outside the station. Koch also supported the arrivals and departures of more than a dozen Soyuz and cargo resupply spacecraft from the U.S, Japan, and Russia.

"This journey has been everyone’s journey. Thank you to all involved in the success of our mission, and for giving me the opportunity to carry everyone’s dreams into space," Koch tweeted on Feb 7, "I’m filled with gratitude to be back on the planet!" She hasn’t ruled out the opportunity for another mission. Perhaps she’ll return to top her own record.