Record-breaking astronaut Christina Koch return to Earth on Wednesday

The Soyuz MS-13 crew spacecraft is seen as it approached the International Space Station for docking on the 50th anniversary of NASA landing humans on the Moon for the first time. The Soyuz will return Expedition 61 crew members NASA astronaut Christina Koch, station commander Luca Parmitano of ESA (European Space Agency), and Soyuz commander Alexander Skvortsov of Roscosmos to Earth on February 6.

Record-breaking NASA astronaut Christina Koch and two of her colleagues will complete their missions aboard the International Space Station (ISS) this week and head back to Earth, and their departure and landing will be shown live on NASA TV.

NASA astronaut Christina Koch said Tuesday — her 319th day in a row in space — that taking part in the first all-female spacewalk was the highlight of her mission. She’s been living on the International Space Station since March and returns to Earth on February 6, landing in Kazakhstan with two colleagues aboard a Russian capsule.

Koch will have spent 328 consecutive days in space, during which she broke the record for the longest single-duration spaceflight by a woman, and also participated in the first all-woman spacewalk along with her colleague Jessica Mier. She is also seventh on the list of American astronauts who have spent the most time in space, and will have completed the second-longest single spaceflight stay by any American astronaut after Scott Kelly.

During her time on the ISS, Koch participants in six spacewalks, including walks to upgrade the station’s power system and to fix the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a dark matter detection instrument which has far outlived its originally planned lifespan and was previously considered unserviceable.

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