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Christina Koch aged 40 years is an electrical engineer from Livingston, Montana. She arrived at the International Space Station on March 14 and has set the record for the longest single space flight by a woman. She broke the record held by former Space Station Commander Piggy Whitson in 2016-2017. Christina is expected to spend a total of 328 days or almost 11 months on board the space station before returning to Earth.
The earlier record of Peggy Whitson was for 288 days. Normally missions are for a period of 6 months but NASA announced that Christina was extending her mission until February 2020.. Her extended mission will help NASA learn about the effects of long space flights. This data is very important to support future exploration missions to the Moon and Mars. The US record for the longest space flight is 340 days and was set by Scott Kelly in 2015-2016. The world record is 15 months set in the 1990’s by a Russian cosmanaut aboard the Mir space station.
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