A 40-year-old female astronaut from the U.S, Christina Koch, is set to break the record of the longest spaceflight for women. His flight started March and was extended to February 2020. (Image via Khabarhub English News)

Christina Koch, female astronaut with the longest spaceflight

Alfonsus Adi Putra
Business & Industry
Sci-Tech
Dec 29, 2019
2759
On Sunday, a United States (U.S) astronaut broke a record of the longest spaceflight ever. It is a female astronaut! Previously, the longest spaceflight was 288 days, but this astronaut still has two months remaining in the schedule.

Meet Christina Koch, a 40-year-old electrical engineer from Livingston, Montana. On 14 March 2019, she arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) on Expedition 61. The longest spaceflight record was previously held by the former commander of the ISS, Peggy Whitson with 665 days outside the Earth and 288 days in a space mission.

Koch is expected to spend 328 days, roughly 11 months, before coming back to Earth. It was her fourth spacewalk.

NASA usually holds mission for six months. But, in April 2019, the space agency said that it had extended the space mission until February 2020. With the long spaceflight, NASA expects to see the effect of long spaceflight on humans’ bodies for further exploration of the Moon and Mars.

That’s a record for female astronauts. Meanwhile, the longest spaceflight record in the U.S is still held by a male astronaut, Scott Kelly, who broke the record in the 2015 – 2016 space mission. Kelly then wrote an autobiography in 2017 titled “Endurance”. Koch admitted that she got a lot of advice from Kelly’s autobiography.

But the world still recognizes Russian former cosmonaut, Valeri Polyakov, as the astronaut with the longest spaceflight. He spent almost 15 months in space aboard the former Mir space station.

Source: https://bit.ly/2EZo8Oc

Science , Astronomy , Space , Exploration , Astronaut , U.S , NASA , Christina-Koch