Christina Koch - The Elite Sport of Spacewalking
For love and fear of the adrenaline rush Why would anyone want to risk their lives by pitting themselves against the extremely dangerous vast expanse of space?
One must value the courage, discipline, and athletic ability required to go out and spacewalk in such life-threatening conditions. The motives for this kind of risk-taking must be pure. There is only a small band of dedicated individuals who blaze this frontier. It takes much more than ambition and the desire to serve our country, and the world, to submit to this humbling experience.
As students of human nature, the study of risk motivation interests us. Astronauts and Spacewalkers possess a personality which reflects a unique psychological makeup. Besides loving the adventure and thrill of space exploration, they must also get a high from putting their life on the line. Such people have an internal mental structure that they have assembled throughout their life experiences to place tremendous value on putting themselves on the brink of disaster, and then escaping. To take on the elements of nature and to emerge victoriously requires something special of body, mind, and spirit. When a person with this type of internal organization is instilled with the necessary training, intelligence, common sense, and judgment of danger, an Astronaut Spacewalker may emerge. Hence Christina Koch.
Who is Christina Koch, NASA Astronaut Spacewalker?
Christina Koch is an American astronaut and engineer who returned to Earth on February sixth, 2020, after spending almost a year in space. On March eighteenth, 2019, Christina left Earth for the International Space Station for her first flight as an astronaut. While on this mission, she took part in the first all-female spacewalk with Jessica Meir. Koch was away from Earth for three hundred and twenty-eight days, which beat the previous record for continuous space flight by a woman of two hundred and eighty-nine days. Christina is one of the most daring and inspirational people in the world because of her many achievements, such as holding the record for the longest continuous space flight by a woman and six spacewalks so far.According to the BBC, she completed five thousand two hundred and forty-eight orbits of the Earth during her mission. She traveled two hundred and twenty-three million kilometers (one hundred and thirty-nine million miles.) That’s the equivalent of two hundred and ninety-one round trips to the Moon from Earth.Importantly, her mission helped NASA get ready to go to Mars. While in space, Christina devoted much of her time conducting various science experiments and investigations. But, just being in space was an experiment. The lack of gravity causes bone and muscle loss in astronauts, and Christina was part of the Vertebral Strength investigation, which focused on helping to develop counter-measures to the impact of space flight.NASA said in a statement, per CNN, “Christina’s extended mission provided researchers the opportunity to observe the effects of long-duration space flight on a woman, as the agency plans to return to the Moon under the Artemis program and prepare for human exploration of Mars.