Christina Koch's Artemis II flight is a "Montana to the Moon" story that connects your state to the first trip near the Moon in more than 50 years.

Who she is and her Montana link

Christina Koch is a NASA astronaut and engineer who lived in Livingston, Montana, before she moved to Houston to join the Astronaut Corps. She already holds the record for the longest single space mission by a woman (328 days on the International Space Station) and took part in the first all-female spacewalks.

What Artemis II will do

Artemis II is planned as a roughly 10-day mission that will launch on the giant Space Launch System rocket, send the Orion spacecraft around the Moon on a "free-return" path, and then bring the crew back to Earth. The crew of four-Reid Wiseman (commander), Victor Glover (pilot), Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen (mission specialists)-will test life-support, navigation, and communication systems before future missions actually land on the Moon again.

The big "firsts" she'll be part of

Koch is set to become the first woman to travel beyond low-Earth orbit and to fly on a lunar mission, while Glover will be the first Black astronaut and Hansen the first non-American to go that far into deep space. Artemis II will take them farther from Earth than any humans have gone before, swinging about 6,400 miles beyond the far side of the Moon before heading home.