Christina Koch's Path to the Moon

Yesterday, history was made. For the first time since 1972, a rocket launched to the Moon—the first time for many of us to witness such an event. Christina Koch (pronounced cook), the only woman in the four-person crew, is also making history as the first woman to travel so far into space. 

Image Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

Koch was born in 1979, seven years after Apollo 17, the last mission to the Moon. She doesn't remember a time when she didn't want to be an astronaut. "I loved things that made me feel small. I loved looking at the night sky. I love the ocean—I grew up in coastal North Carolina. And I just love contemplating the vastness of the universe and our place in it," Koch said in an interview with Brilliant Star magazine.

She enjoyed science and math and excelled at those subjects, helped along her path by attending North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics. Koch studied electrical engineering and physics at North Carolina State University, earning both a Bachelor of Science and a Master's degree in electrical engineering. She set her sights on NASA early by graduating from the NASA Academy Program at Goddard Space Flight Center in 2001.

Before her ventures into space, Koch focused on extreme environments on Earth. She was a research associate in the United States Antarctic Program, which took her to both the North and South Poles. She did a winter-over season at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, where she learned how to adapt to the challenges of living far from family in a harsh climate with the same people—skills that readily translate to space travel.

Koch also used her engineering skills in the Space Department of the Applied Physics Lab at John Hopkins University, where she built instruments to measure radiation particles on NASA missions. She has also worked as a field engineer and a station chief for NOAA. 

Koch's depth of experience, along with her childhood dream, eventually led her to apply to NASA's astronaut program. She was named as one of eight members of NASA's 21st astronaut class in 2013 and completed her training in 2015. Four years later, she headed to the International Space Station, where she made history twice. First, she participated in the first all-female spacewalk on October 18, 2019. When her mission was extended until February 2020, she took the record from Peggy Whitson for the longest single continuous stay in space for a woman at 328 days.

Koch was named as part of Artemis II's crew in 2023 in a history-making move. Yesterday, April 1, 2026, she launched into space with fellow NASA astronauts Mission Commander Reid Wiseman and Pilot Victor Glover and Mission Specialist 2 and CSA astronaut Jeremy Hansen. While the other three astronauts come from military backgrounds, Koch joins the crew as an expert electrical engineer and Mission Specialist 1. Her role includes overseeing hatch systems and operations on Orion. Mission specialists are trained in all roles in the event of an emergency. 

Koch and the Artemis II crew will reach lunar orbit April 6, fly around the Moon, and return to Earth April 10. When she does, Koch will emerge from the Orion capsule as the first woman, but surely not the last, to travel beyond low Earth orbit as humanity bids to go to the Moon once again.

Image Credit: Mark Sowa - NASA - JSC

Crosspost: Woman On A Mission: How This Fil-Am Engineer Rose Through The Ranks At NASA

By Christina M. Oriel, for Asian Journal

"I REALLY wasn’t interested in space," confesses Josephine Santiago-Bond... The Filipina-American engineer never anticipated that her experiences would culminate in a career revolving around missions and exploration in outer space.

It was 15 years ago when Santiago-Bond first landed an internship at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)’s John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Photo Credit: NASA Public Affairs

Today, she’s the head of the Advanced Engineering Development Branch at the center, a division she helped create that extends engineering support to the agency’s various missions in space, on Earth and other planets.

Read more about her life and career trajectory at

https://www.asianjournal.com/.../woman-on-a-mission-how.../

 

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Shoutout to Amena Karimyan, Afghani astronomer and one of BBC's 100 Women of 2021

Written By Bryné Hadnott

This past year has been...a lot of different things: exhausting, emotionally draining, terrifying, overwhelming and packed with more events than a person should have to experience in 365 days. Still, there were moments when the actions of one individual shined so bright that they cut through the gray, dense fog that was 2021. 

Amena Karimyan—civil engineer, astronomer, and founder of Kayhana Astronomical Group—is one such individual. Last summer, her all-girls astronomy education nonprofit won an award from the International Astronomy and Astrophysics competition and received twelve Bresser Messier AR90/900 telescopes from the International Astronomical Union's Telescopes for All project. 

Her brilliance and activism were noticed by the Austrian Academy of Sciences and Karimyan was offered an invitation to conduct research in Vienna for three months. On August 24th, just one week after the Taliban wrested control of the seat of government in Kabul, she attempted to escape to Pakistan by land, but was turned away at the border. She tried again on September 10th, and after showing her invitation from Austria, was permitted to cross the border into Pakistan. A week later, Karimyan was invited to the Austrian embassy in Islamabad where she hoped to finalize her visa and begin the journey to Vienna. After two more appointments and intense questioning, her visa was abruptly rejected without explanation. 

With nowhere else to go, Karimyan was forced to remain in temporary guest housing in Pakistan, supported by private individuals, donations from Austrian non-profits, and vocal support from The Graz journalist, Evelyn Schalk. Austrian playwright and Nobel Prize winner, Elfriede Jelinek, wrote in a solidarity statement, “the worst thing I can imagine is holding out my hand to someone who is drowning and then pulling it away at the last moment. The Austrian Foreign Ministry did that with Amena Karimyan.” 

Over 7500 people have signed a petition calling on the Austrian Foreign Ministry to reinstate Karimyan's visa, but her status remains unclear.  As a woman, a scientist, and an activist for girls' science education, she cannot safely return to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. If you're interested in helping Amena Karimyan find a safe haven where she can continue her incredible work, please reach out to @AmenaKarimyan or @evelyn_schalk on Twitter.  

Spatial Skills, STEM, and the Gender Gap*

Most engineering faculty have highly developed 3-D spatial skills and may not understand that others can struggle with a topic they find so easy. Furthermore, they may not believe that spatial skills can be improved through practice, falsely believing that this particular skill is one that a person is either “born with” or not. They don’t understand that they probably developed these skills over many years.                             
 —Sheryl Sorby

 

One of the most persistent gender gaps in cognitive skills is found in the area of spatial skills, specifically on measures of mental rotation, where researchers consistently find that men outscore women by a medium to large margin (Linn & Petersen, 1985; Voyer et al., 1995). While no definitive evidence proves that strong spatial abilities are required for achievement in STEM careers (Ceci et al., 2009), many people, including science and engineering professors, view them as important for success in fields like engineering and classes like organic chemistry. The National Academy of Sciences states that “spatial thinking is at the heart of many great discoveries in science, that it underpins many of the activities of the modern workforce, and that it pervades the everyday activities of modern life” (National Research Council, Committee on Support for Thinking Spatially, 2006, p.1).

 

Sheryl Sorby, a professor of mechanical engineering and engineering mechanics at Michigan Technological University, has studied the role of spatial-skills training in the retention of female students in engineering since the early 1990s. She finds that individuals can dramatically improve their 3-D spatial-visualization skills within a short time with training, and female engineering students with poorly developed spatial skills who receive spatial visualization training are more likely to stay in engineering than are their peers who do not receive training.

 

AASWOMEN Newsletter for November 14, 2014

AAS Committee on the Status of Women

Issue of November 14, 2014

eds: Daryl Haggard, Nicolle Zellner, Meredith Hughes, & Elysse Voyer

This week's issues:

1. Queer Eye for the Straight Marriage  

2. Sappho and the Origins of Ancient Greek Astronomy 

3. The Best Part of My Week   

4. Lead ESA Scientist Wears Shirt Covered in Gratuitous Sexy Chicks For Comet Landing Livestream  

5. Why 'Interstellar' Is Great for Women in STEM

6. Rocket Science: Four NASA moms offer their 7 best insights on getting more girls into STEM  

7. For America's Future, Engineering Needs to Diversify

8. CERN Council selects next Director-General

9. Boys Who Bully More Likely to Sexually Harass 2 Years Later

10. Job Opportunities

11. How to Submit to the AASWomen Newsletter

12. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWomen Newsletter

13. Access to Past Issues of the AASWomen Newsletter

Changing the Debate about Women in STEM: Celebrating our Equal Abilities!

The following is a guest post by Greet Brosens, cross-posted from the Sagent Solutions Blog. 

Greet has worked in the recruitment industry for the last 18 years. Recently, Greet founded Sagent Solutions, an organization which promotes women in engineering and attracts women to a field where they are dramatically underrepresented. Whilst companies are sincere in their efforts to increase the numbers, Greet believes that more can be done to change the perception of female engineers, and to give them the right support networks to succeed.

After guest tweeting for The Women’s Room last week, I had enough inspiration for another blog about stereotypes. The stereotypical treatment of girls and women is a subject I have written about a lot in the last year and done a lot of research on. Unfortunately the more I read the more I despair.