04/01/2026
NASA astronaut Christina Koch is accustomed to breaking records. As a mission specialist aboard NASA’s Artemis II Orion spacecraft, she will become the first female to launch to the Moon. NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) is poised to launch Wednesday, April 1st (no kidding) with a launch period that begins at 6:24 PM EDT and extends for 2 hours, if needed, from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. During the Apollo Moon missions, only male astronauts flew to the Moon since the first NASA female astronauts weren’t selected until 1978. The last mission to the Moon was Apollo 17 in 1972 which was 52 years ago. The Artemis II crew will NOT land on the Moon as they will make a wide loop around as they expect to break the distance record from Earth set by the Apollo 13 crew who experienced an emergency in space and had to abort their lunar landing.
Koch, who is 47, previously launched on a Russian Soyuz to the International Space Station in 2019. During that mission, she broke astronaut Peggy Whitson’s record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman, with 328 consecutive days in space. Koch also performed six spacewalks and three of those were with astronaut Jessica Meir for the first all-female spacewalks.
While Koch is the only woman on the flight, the launch director is a woman named Charlie Blackwell-Thompson. She has the final authority for the go/no go decision for the launch of the SLS rocket. She was also the launch director for the uncrewed Artemis I mission in 2022. Since there is a Canadian astronaut on this flight, there is a backup astronaut for him and that is rookie Canadian astronaut Jenni Gibbons. Besides helping get the Orion spacecraft configured for flight, Gibbons will also work as a Capsule Communicator or Capcom in Mission Control in Houston during the 10 day flight. You can follow the mission of Artemis II several ways per NASA: https://go.nasa.gov/4c46fOu
NASA images
