Michigan Astronaut Returns To Earth, Sets Record

MICHIGAN — A Michigan astronaut is back on Earth after setting another record in space.

Christina Koch, from Grand Rapids, landed in the country of Kazakhtan on Thursday morning. She was aboard a Russian spacecraft where she spent 11 months in space — the single longest spaceflight for a woman.

In October, she also made history among the first all-woman spacewalk.

She told media she hopes the record will be broken soon by more women pushing boundaries.

According to NASA, Koch and two other astronauts left the International Space Station at 12:50 a.m. EST and made a safe, parachute-assisted landing at 4:12 a.m. just southeast of the remote town of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan.

"Koch’s extended mission will provide researchers the opportunity to observe effects of long-duration spaceflight on a woman as the agency plans to return humans to the Moon under the Artemis program and prepare for human exploration of Mars," the announcement said.

Koch launched March 14, 2019, alongside fellow NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin. Her first journey into space of 328 days is the second-longest single spaceflight by a U.S. astronaut and also places her seventh on the list of cumulative time in space for American astronauts with one or more missions, NASA said.

Koch completed 5,248 orbits of the Earth and a journey of 139 million miles, roughly the equivalent of 291 trips to the Moon and back, according to NASA. She conducted six spacewalks during 11 months on orbit, including the first three all-woman spacewalks, spending 42 hours and 15 minutes outside the station.

She also witnessed the arrival of a dozen visiting spacecraft and the departure of another dozen.