{"id":12670,"date":"2020-02-06T00:36:07","date_gmt":"2020-02-05T16:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/koch-heads-home-after-record-setting-mission\/"},"modified":"2020-02-06T00:36:07","modified_gmt":"2020-02-05T16:36:07","slug":"koch-heads-home-after-record-setting-mission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/koch-heads-home-after-record-setting-mission\/","title":{"rendered":"Koch heads home after record-setting mission"},"content":{"rendered":"

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION<\/p>\n

\"\"
Astronaut Christina Koch, Soyuz commander Alexander Skvortsov and European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano sit inside the Soyuz MS-13 spacecraft for pre-landing checks. Credit: NASA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Christina Koch, veteran of six spacewalks outside the International Space Station \u2014 including the first all-female excursion \u2014 will join a Russian commander and an Italian flight engineer for a fiery plunge back to Earth early Thursday, setting a new world record for the longest single flight by a female astronaut.<\/p>\n

While she did not set out to be a role model when she applied to join NASA\u2019s astronaut corp, she\u2019s happy to do whatever she can to inspire young people to pursue their dreams, helping them \u201ckind of tune in and pay attention\u201d to the opportunities opening up in space.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then the second aspect of that is inspiration,\u201d she said in a space-to-ground interview Tuesday with CBS News. \u201cI think some people draw inspiration from milestones and from things that they\u2019ve seen someone work hard to achieve.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I hope that those two things together, outreach and inspiration, make it worth all the talk about these different things that we\u2019ve had the honor to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Strapped into the center seat of the cramped Soyuz MS-13\/59S ferry ship, commander Alexander Skvortsov, flanked on the left by Italian co-pilot Luca Parmitano and on the right by Koch, planned to undock from the space station\u2019s upper Poisk module at 12:50 a.m. EST Thursday.<\/p>\n

Monitoring the departure from inside the lab complex will be Expedition 62 commander Oleg Skripochka and Koch\u2019s spacewalking partners, astronauts Jessica Meir and Drew Morgan.<\/p>\n

After moving a safe distance away, Skvortsov plans to oversee an automated rocket firing starting at 3:18 a.m., a four-minute 38-second braking \u201cburn\u201d intended to slow the ship by about 286 mph. That\u2019s just enough to drop the far side of the spacecraft\u2019s orbit deep into the atmosphere, setting up a landing on the snowy steppe of Kazakhstan.<\/p>\n

About a half hour later, after jettisoning the ship\u2019s no-longer-needed lower propulsion module and upper orbital compartment, the crew module is expected to slam back into the discernible atmosphere around 3:49 a.m. at an altitude of 62 miles.<\/p>\n

Twenty-three minutes later, descending under a large orange-and-white parachute, the crew compartment will settle to a jarring rocket-assisted touchdown at 4:12 a.m. (3:12 p.m. local time) near the town of Dzhezkazgan.<\/p>\n

While hitting the atmosphere at nearly five miles per second and enduring re-entry temperatures around 2,000 degrees would be daunting to most, Koch said the Soyuz spacecraft is one of the most reliable ever built.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlso my friends all tell me that the ride under the parachutes is the ride of your life,\u201d she added. \u201cSo if you just look at it like that, like it\u2019s really fun, then you\u2019ll have a great time and you\u2019ll be fine.\u201d<\/p>\n

She\u2019s especially looking forward to \u201cseeing the plasma go by on the window when we\u2019re actually doing re-entry and the G\u2019s are starting to hit. I think that will really make it feel real, that I\u2019m actually coming back from space.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
NASA astronaut Christina Koch floats aboard the International Space Station wearing her Russian Sokol launch and entry spacesuit. Credit: NASA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Russian recovery crews, along with NASA and European Space Agency flight surgeons and support personnel, will be stationed nearby to help the returning station fliers out of the Soyuz for initial medical checks, traditional fresh fruit and satellite phone calls home to family and friends.<\/p>\n

From the landing site, all three crew members will be flown by helicopter to Karaganda. From there, Skvortsov will take a Russian jet back to Star City near Moscow while Koch and Parmitano fly on to Cologne, Germany, aboard a NASA plane. Parmitano will get off there and Koch will continue on to Houston for debriefing and rehabilitation.<\/p>\n

AFTER 11 MONTHS IN SPACE, READJUSTING TO GRAVITY<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Koch grew up in Jacksonville, N.C., and now lives near the Johnson Space Center in Houston. She holds a master\u2019s degree in electrical engineering and is an experienced surfer who enjoys backpacking and rock climbing. Despite daily exercise sessions during her mission, readjusting to gravity after 328 days in the weightless environment of space will take weeks.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone says that getting back into gravity is such a surprise because you suddenly have to actually work to raise your own arms and of course your legs,\u201d Koch said. \u201cThey say that when the G\u2019s first start to hit as you\u2019re coming through the layers of the atmosphere, that even when you\u2019re at point two of a G, essentially, you can already feel it, it already feels so, so heavy.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I think that will be definitely something to get used to. I haven\u2019t had to hold up even my own body weight in a long time, so we\u2019ll see how that goes.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Skvortsov and Parmitano, launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on July 20, landing will close out a voyage spanning 200 days 16 hours and 44 minutes, covering 3,216 orbits and 85.2 million miles. Including two earlier station visits, Skvortsov\u2019s total time in space will stand at 546 days while Parmitano\u2019s total over two flights will total 367 days.<\/p>\n

Koch was already aboard the station when Skvortsov and Parmitano arrived. With landing Thursday, her time off planet will stand at 328 days 13 hours and 58 minutes, the longest single flight by a female astronaut or cosmonaut. Her voyage covered 5,248 orbits and 139 million miles.<\/p>\n

Asked what she will miss the most about life in space, Koch said \u201cnumber one, hands down,\u201d is her crewmates.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are like family, we support each other, we work together, we have the same dreams and it\u2019s been awesome to basically get to know another set of people outside my own family on Earth so well.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I think definitely the other thing I\u2019m going to miss the most, is being able to do this whenever I want,\u201d she said, flipping around in weightlessness. \u201cMicrogravity is a lot of fun. I haven\u2019t actually put my feet down or walked in a long time, and it\u2019s really fun to be in a place where you can just bounce around between the ceiling and the floor whenever you want.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
From left to right, astronauts Christina Koch, Andrew Morgan (rear), Luca Parmitano and Jessica Meir. Credit: NASA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As for what she\u2019s looking forward to the most back on Earth, her husband, family and friends ranks at the top of the list. After that? Enjoying the outdoors.<\/p>\n

\u201cI live near the beach and I absolutely love the water, so hopefully going for a swim or a surf or just walking my dog on the beach, feeling the sand, feeling the wind,\u201d she said. \u201cThose are things that you can\u2019t really replicate up here, so I can\u2019t wait to be out in nature.\u201d<\/p>\n

She did not have long to wait, with landing targeted for the snow-covered steppe of Kazakhstan where temperatures hovered in the mid 20s and the wind chill was around 14 degrees.<\/p>\n

While very different from the controlled environment aboard the space station, cold weather was nothing new to Koch, who spent multiple winters in Antarctica and Greenland as a research engineer with Johns Hopkins University and the national Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration before joining NASA\u2019s astronaut corps in 2013.<\/p>\n

A RECORD STAY IN SPACE<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Koch\u2019s record flight is just 12 days short of the U.S. single-flight endurance record set by former astronaut Scott Kelly. She now ranks No. 7 on the list of most experienced NASA astronauts and 50th in the world.<\/p>\n

During her stay aboard the station, Koch participated in six spacewalks totaling 42 hours and 15 minutes. She and Meir carried out the first all-female spacewalk last Oct. 18, replacing a faulty solar array battery charge controller, and two more on Jan. 15 and 20 to complete work started last year to replace a set of solar array batteries.<\/p>\n

During their historic first spacewalk together, \u201cwe caught each other\u2019s eye and we knew that we were really honored with this opportunity to inspire so many,\u201d Koch said in a NASA interview. \u201cAnd just hearing our voices talk to mission control, knowing two female voices had never been on the loops, solving those problems together outside, it was a really special feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Koch\u2019s record-setting mission began on March 14 when she blasted off aboard the Soyuz MS-12\/58S spacecraft with commander Alexey Ovchinin and NASA astronaut Nick Hague.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The Soyuz MS-13 spacecraft approaches the International Space Station for docking July 20 with Alexander Skvortsov, Luca Parmitano and Andrew Morgan on-board. Credit: NASA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ovchinin and Hague endured a dramatic launch abort the previous October when their booster suffered a catastrophic failure two minutes after liftoff. Instead of reaching orbit, the Soyuz executed an emergency landing, touching down safely about 250 miles from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.<\/p>\n

U.S. and Russian station managers opted to send Ovchinin and Hague back up last March, adding Koch to the Soyuz MS-12\/58S crew. NASA eventually extended the missions of both Koch and Morgan, re-assigning her to Morgan\u2019s original seat aboard the Soyuz MS-13\/59S spacecraft for the trip back to Earth Thursday.<\/p>\n

Morgan\u2019s stay aboard the station was extended to April 17 when he will return to Earth with Skripochka and Meir aboard their Soyuz MS-15\/61S ferry ship. They will be replaced by NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and cosmonauts Nikolai Tikhonov and Andrei Babkin, scheduled for launch April 9 aboard the Soyuz MS-16\/62S spacecraft.<\/p>\n

COMMERCIAL CREW LAUNCH DELAYS LEAVE STATION WITH REDUCED CREW<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

That will be the first of just two Soyuz missions in 2020, both flights carrying just one NASA astronaut each. The Russians scaled back the Soyuz flight rate anticipating the long-planned debut of new commercially developed crew ferry ships being built by SpaceX and Boeing.<\/p>\n

But NASA\u2019s commercial crew program has encountered multiple delays due to funding shortfalls and technical issues, and it\u2019s not yet known when the first commercial crew ship will reach the station.<\/p>\n

SpaceX is expected to be the first off the pad with a Crew Dragon capsule, carrying NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken, taking off sometime this spring.<\/p>\n

Boeing\u2019s CST-100 Starliner is expected to fly a piloted test flight of its own later this year. NASA is still evaluating the results of an unpiloted test flight last December in which a timing problem prevented a planned docking with the space station. It\u2019s not yet known if a reflight will be required.<\/p>\n

But getting one or both spacecraft off the ground as soon as possible is critical for NASA and the International Space Station. With just one NASA astronaut \u2014 Cassidy \u2014 aboard starting April 17 when Skripochka, Meir and Morgan depart, research will be extremely limited and non-emergency spacewalks will be on indefinite hold.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy the plan, we have a short handover period with the previous Soyuz (crew),\u201d Cassidy said. \u201cSo we\u2019ll overlap there, but then we\u2019re just the three of us until we undock (in October). With luck, we\u2019ll have a commercial crew, whichever one it is, but we\u2019ll have some visitors, and we\u2019ll be excited for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

In any case, Cassidy, Tikhonov and Babkin are trained to handle the station on their own through the end of their flight in late October when a fresh three-person crew, including another NASA astronaut, is expected to arrive.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re \u2026 ready operationally, mentally prepared, to just be the three of us on the space station, which will be a change in operations from what we\u2019re used to today (with) six people,\u201d Cassidy told reporters during a briefing last November.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019ll be less available crew hours (for science), because you still have to devote your baseline number of hours per week or whatever to keeping the thing running. So it\u2019ll be (a) change in philosophy and how we manage crew time. But the goal is still the same, to maximize science hours and research, and we\u2019ll do our best to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION Astronaut Christina Koch, Soyuz commander Alexander Skvortsov and European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano sit inside the Soyuz MS-13 spacecraft for pre-landing checks. Credit: NASA Christina Koch, veteran of six spacewalks outside the International Space Station \u2014 including the first all-female excursion \u2014 will join a Russian commander […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2362,670,524,235,2126,1565,822,831],"class_list":["post-12670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-alexander-skvortsov","tag-boeing","tag-commercial-crew","tag-crew-dragon","tag-crew-dragon-demo-2","tag-cst-100","tag-cst-100-starliner-crew-flight-test","tag-european-space-agency"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12670"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12670\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}