Meet Christina Koch and Jessica Meir — the two NASA astronauts who are going to walk for hours in space
Jessica Meir and Christina Koch are among the 12 women active NASA astronauts. But they are the only two women currently living at the International Space Station with four other male astronauts.
Christina Koch, an electrical engineer, was selected as a NASA astronaut in 2013. She joined ISS earlier this year in March. Until now she has participated in four spacewalks.
After she returns, Koch will be the only woman to have done the longest single spaceflight with an expected total of 328 days in space.
She was first inspired to explore space when she visited Kennedy space center near Disneyland with her family. “I don’t remember the time when I didn’t want to be a part of space exploration,” she said.
However, Koch excelled in other areas too. She spent three and a half years of her life in the Arctic or Antarctic.
Credits: Christina Koch/twitter
Jessica Meir is a biologist from Maine. She has spent much of her time mammals and birds living in extreme conditions, even Antarctica. She has even got a PhD in marine biology.
Credits: AP
This will be Jessica's second spacewalk. She wanted to become an astronaut since she was five years old. “In first grade we were asked to draw a picture of what we wanted to be when we grew up. And I drew an astronaut standing on the moon next the flag in a space suit. That kind of image. And I really said it my whole life ever since then,” she said.
Though she was interested in space, her favorite subject is biology. She went to Brown University and majored in the subject.
Credits: International Space Station
She participated in NASA’s Extreme Environment Missions Operation where astronauts are trained to how they can survive in space. Koch even lived underwater for a few days.
Jessica took her very first space flight in September 2019 to join the International Space Station.
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