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North Carolina astronaut Christina Koch made her maiden voyage to space Thursday at 3:14 pm EDT with launch of the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Koch grew up in Jacksonville and graduated from the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics in Durham in 1997. She then earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering in 2001, a Bachelor of Physics and a Master of Electrical Engineering degree. 39, the following year.
On Thursday afternoon, during a night of surveillance on the campus of the North American state, the crowd held their breath as Koch rushed into space before bursting into thunderous applause.
Koch will spend six months aboard the International Space Station and will participate next week in the first spacewalk. For the N.C. state and those who know Koch, the mission will probably inspire future generations.
"What a wonderful model that I've had the privilege of meeting twice and that little girls from all over America are going to see, and from around the world," said Assistant Vice-Dean Jamila Simpson to academic affairs at NC State.
When Koch received NASA's call that she had been accepted as part of the 2013 Astronaut Candidate category, she was at the NOAA's American Samoa Observatory, where she held the position station manager, monitoring atmospheric gases, particulates and radiation to better understand climate forcing, depletion of the ozone layer and the quality of the air. Previously, she had done similar work at NOAA's monitoring facilities in Barrow, Alaska.
Koch's NASA career began at the NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, where she worked on several scientific instruments flying missions exploring the solar system. She then went to Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory, where she continued to design instruments. His contributions include the energetic particle detection instrument aboard the Juno satellite, which is currently studying Jupiter, and the onboard X-ray spectrometer instrument aboard the Suzaku mission studying Van Allen's radiation belts.
She has won numerous awards for her work, including group awards and the United States Congress Antarctic Service Medal.
Koch is not one to stay in the lab all the time.
She bet on her love of the outdoors and is challenged, physically and technically, first with a climbing course at NCSU. She pushed this to the extreme under the US Antarctic program where she not only worked at the Admunsen-Scott South Pole station, but was also part of the firefighting team, including from the time spent to the most severe winters. She then spent several winters in science at Summit Station in Greenland.
Since being selected for the Astronaut Program in June 2013, she has received extensive training in the following areas: International Space Station systems, spacewalks, robotics, physiological training, and aquatic survival training. in nature. She also learned to fly the T-38 plane.
These high-performance planes are not just company cars and allow astronauts to travel from their home in Houston near the Johnson Spaceflight Center. They also bring a valuable experience to astronauts in the type of G-forces they will experience at launch. But more importantly, they train you to think quickly.
Koch also spent time at NASA's Bypass Neutralization Laboratory. This 20-meter-deep pool contains complete models of the International Space Station modules. Koch will sail with fellow NASA astronaut Anne McClain. The release in the space of next week will focus on improving the batteries that allow the station to operate as it passes into the dark side of the Earth every 45 minutes.
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