NASA astronaut Christina Koch, who has spent longer in space on one mission than the other woman, is scheduled to return to Earth on Thursday, Feb. 6, along side two of her International space platform crewmates.
Koch, along side station Commander Luca Parmitano of ESA (European Space Agency), and Soyuz commander Alexander Skvortsov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos will depart the station Feb. 6 during a Soyuz spacecraft which will make a parachute-assisted landing at 4:14 a.m. EST southeast of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan (3:13 p.m. Kazakhstan time).
Live coverage of their return will begin at 9 p.m. EST Wednesday, Feb. 5, on NASA Television and therefore the agency’s website. Landing coverage will begin at 3 a.m. Thursday, Feb. 6.
Koch, who launched in March 2019 with NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin, is wrapping up a 328-day mission on her first flight into space. Koch’s extended mission will provide researchers the chance to watch effects of long-duration spaceflight on a lady because the agency plans to return to the Moon under the Artemis program and steel oneself against human exploration of Mars.
Koch will have spanned 5,248 orbits of the world – a journey of 139 million miles, roughly the equivalent of 291 round trips to the Moon. She conducted six spacewalks during her 11 months on orbit, spending 42 hours and quarter-hour outside the station. She witnessed the arrival of a dozen visiting vehicles and therefore the departure of another dozen. After landing, she is going to have completed the second longest single spaceflight by a U.S. astronaut after retired astronaut Scott Kelly, placing her seventh on the list of yank space travelers with the foremost time in space.
Read More: www.nasa.gov
