NASA astronaut Christina Koch who recently returned to Earth after a record-breaking 328-day stint on the International Space Station to a hero’s welcome from her dog. “Not sure who was more excited. Glad she remembers me after a year!” Koch shared on social media, along with a video of her dog, LBD, who was over the moon as the astronaut returned home to Galveston.
The video has got 3.7 million views since it was posted on Feb. 13, Koch’s 11 months in orbit was a record for the longest spaceflight by a woman. She said, to Fox News, Bill Hemmer recently, that boredom was never a problem during her stint on the ISS. “I wish I had enough time on there to get bored, but not all,” she explained, during her first live TV interview.
While not busy performing experiments, Koch said she “soaked up the unique atmosphere” of the floating space lab by taking pictures and spending time with her crewmates. “Boredom was not a problem at all,” she added. The mission gave researchers the opportunity to observe the effects of long-duration spaceflight on a woman. The study is important as NASA plans to return to the moon under the Artemis program and prepare for the human exploration of Mars.
Koch said seeing Earth from the International Space Station “brought perspective,” adding that she enjoyed the planet’s beauty in sunrises and night passes.
“It helped me see that all humans are inherently the same,” she said. In October 2019, Koch and fellow NASA astronaut Jessica Meir made history with the first all-female spacewalk. The astronauts were just under five hours into their spacewalk to replace a battery charger on the ISS when President Trump called to congratulate them on their “brilliant achievement ”