She will see parts of the solar system no human has ever seen before.

She will go where no woman, and very few men, have ever been, some 250,000 miles into the heavens and 6,000 miles beyond the far side of the moon.

She will hear the cheers, not just of her fellow NC State community but of a nation and a world eager for proof that, through science and engineering, a divided planet can unite for accomplishment and curiosity.

When she returns, she’ll tell stories that make the farther reaches of the solar system real and tangible to the bright eyes and eager ears inspired by her journey.

As early as dusk on Wednesday, just as a “pink moon” emerges in the southeastern sky, NASA astronaut Christina Koch and her three crewmates on the Artemis II mission will blast off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida for a 10-day test flight around the moon that will pave the way for the citizens of Earth’s next landing on its nearest celestial body.

Students, faculty and staff are invited to watch the launch at Talley Student Union’s ground-level Pavilions Lounge television area near the Talley Market, beginning at 5:30 p.m., about an hour before liftoff.

Koch, a three-time NC State graduate in physics and electrical engineering, has spent the last 13 years training for this pioneering opportunity, though the dream began long ago when the 10-year-old and her family visited Kennedy Space Center.

Her parents bought her an armload of space exploration posters, which she plastered on the walls of her bedroom in the family’s home in the Onslow County town of Jacksonville.

She spent her entire childhood staring into that 2-D eternity.

Now she’ll visit it in 3-D glory.

Drawn to Frontiers

“I’ve always been drawn to science on the frontiers,” Koch says. “When I was little, I had posters in my room of anything that drew in my fascination for discovery and exploration. I will finally be able to represent the dreams of everyone on Earth.

“The responsibility of an astronaut is to share what we see.”

Koch did that on Sunday at breakfast with fellow NASA crew members Reid Wiseman and Victor Glover and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency, when Wiseman unrolled a map of the U.S. Antarctic Mission’s McMurdo Station. NASA often uses that remote location to simulate the vast emptiness of space and study the earth’s atmosphere at its most unwelcoming location.

“She started talking about standing at the South Pole and looking at nothing but white in all directions,” Wiseman said. “All of a sudden I was imagining being there, seeing what she was seeing. I was imagining feeling the cold, feeling the sun, seeing all the different views that she was seeing.

“And the only reason all of that was unlocked is because I was talking to someone who had been there.”

Ten days from now, Wiseman, Koch, Glover and Hansen will begin to share what they saw on the dark side of the moon, and they’ll take their place among the world’s great explorers, with the goal of motivating the next generation to dream of frontiers.

“We have humanity’s call to go explore and to go do these things and then to share them with the world,” Wiseman says. “We might motivate 10 kids to go do something great. We might motivate one kid to go do something great.

“That, to me, will be the success [of Artemis II].”

Do What Scares You

It will be, however, a tightly cramped and deeply isolating experience to travel in Orion, the new spacecraft that will orbit the moon. Orion is larger than the capsule that delivered NASA astronauts into orbit and onto a lunar landing, but it is many factors smaller than the International Space Station where Koch spent a record-breaking 328.5 days in 2019-20.

Orion has about 330 cubic feet of habitable space (though more with an attached service vehicle), while the ISS has 13,000 cubic feet — the difference between a medium-size recreational vehicle and a five-bedroom house. The astronauts are already prepared to be annoyed by, and annoying to, each other on their journey.

Koch isn’t bothered by being cramped and alone. In addition to Antarctica, she has been stationed at two of the most remote places on earth, Greenland and American Samoa, and her mission on the ISS was about three times longer than expected because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

She’s been trained enough not to be overwhelmed by what could be intimidating circumstances as she and the crew fly 1,000 times further from their home planet’s surface than the ISS.

“The things that intimidate us are also what intrigue us,” Koch told NC State students in 2023.

Even if she were intimidated by all the challenges of this mission, those fears wouldn’t keep her from fulfilling the dream of leaving low-earth orbit to become an inspirational pioneer.

“This mission is now about exploring and learning,” says professor of physics John Blondin, who taught Koch when she was still Christina Hammock as a student at NC State. “It will help humanity establish bases on the moon or on Mars and open up the world of science, of engineering and of technology.

“As for Christina, when she stepped onto campus here, she was fearless. She wanted to do something nobody had ever done.”

And now she will.

Her Biggest Test

This is a test flight of the new Orion spacecraft. It will not land on the moon, which Americans haven’t done in more than half a century. It will, however, show the viability of the next Artemis missions, which are the next steps toward establishing a base on the surface of the moon and a forerunner of an eventual mission to Mars.

Koch does well on tests.

“She is one of the most successful students we’ve ever had,” says another physics professor, Stephen Reynolds, who first met Koch when she was a sophomore. “She just killed on tests, and did every task required of her with a joyful exuberance that made her a pleasure to be around.

“She had a confidence, without being obnoxious. She was a force of nature.” 

Koch became a three-time NC State graduate, earning bachelor’s degrees in physics (2001) and electrical engineering (2002) and a master’s degree in electrical engineering (2002).

She was first accepted into the NASA astronaut program in 2013, with greater odds than most of going to space, though it was still a long shot, even when she was selected for the Artemis mission three years ago.

“The only thing that is really surprising about her is that she has beaten incredible odds to be in this position,” Reynolds says. “But she is still the eager and inquisitive person I first met back then, but even more accomplished.”

I don’t think her biggest impact is going to be going around the moon. It’s going to be inspiring young students to dream even bigger and to tackle their fears.

In the end, Blondin says, Koch heads to the moon representing the best that NC State, the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, and the public education of North Carolina have to offer: fearless exploration, unwavering optimism for the future of mankind and an ability to inspire with education.

“I don’t think her biggest impact is going to be going around the moon,” he says. “It’s going to be inspiring young students to dream even bigger and to tackle their fears.”

And to not let gravity or any other limiting circumstances hold them back.