Oviedo.- The contribution of astronaut Christina Koch, the first woman to fly to the Moon and the one who has spent the most consecutive days in space, to “extending the frontiers of humanity,” earned her the 2026 Princess of Asturias Award for Concord this Wednesday.
Christina Hammock Koch (Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA, 1979) is one of the crew members of NASA’s Artemis II mission that made history in April by orbiting the Moon, ending more than half a century without human presence on the natural satellite.
The jury that awarded this prize this Wednesday, the last to be decided in this year’s edition, highlighted that the “exemplary nature” of that collective work “projects onto everyone” through the message of the Artemis II space mission: “Earth, you are a team”.
The trajectory of this electrical engineer and physicist, who from childhood was clear that she wanted to be an astronaut and oriented every academic and professional decision toward that goal, was highlighted as an inspiration for future generations, especially women, and a symbol of human capacity to overcome challenges and obstacles through work, collaboration, and empathy.
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Koch has been with NASA since 2013 and in March 2019 traveled to the International Space Station (2001 Prince of Asturias Award for International Cooperation), where she was a flight engineer on several expeditions and conducted numerous experiments, including 3D bioprinter tests in microgravity.
A year later, in 2019, she performed, together with Jessica Meir, the first all-female spacewalk in history, a milestone that was repeated on two more occasions during the same mission.
In February 2020, she returned to Earth after 328 consecutive days in space, a record for the longest spaceflight by a woman, surpassing Peggy Whitson’s 289 days and accumulating six spacewalks with 42 hours and 15 minutes outside the spacecraft.
