Astronaut Christina Koch gets the distinction of serving the longest number of days in space. She has now spent 328 days in the International Space Station after she returned to earth on February 6. She has created history and a world record for spending the longest spaceflight by a woman.
She began her landmark space journey in March 2019 along with Nick Hague and Alexey Ovchinin. During her days in space, she has orbited 5,248 times the Earth and this comes to 139 million miles. Koch also held six spacewalks during her stay in the space station, spending 42 hours and 15 minutes outside.
Once Koch comes back from space, she follows astronaut Scott Kelly, who is credited with the longest single spaceflight by a U.S. Astronaut. During her stay in the ISS, she was involved in more than 210 investigations, including NASA’s goals to return humans to the Moon under Artemis program and preparing human exploration of Mars. Koch was also part of a number of studies on future exploration missions that includes study into how human body adjusts to weightlessness, radiation, isolation and stress due to long duration spaceflight.
One of the important projects that Koch participated as per NASA is the Vertebral Strength investigation. This is about bone and muscle degradation of the spine and risk for broken vertebrae because of the extent of spaceflight induced. Another memorable experiment that she was involved is Microgravity Crystals investigation. She had frequently grown leafy greens during her time in the space ship to study effects of microgravity on plant biology.
