Station this is Houston are you ready for the event?
Houston this is station. I'm ready.
Hi I'm Christina Koch this is Ask NASA where we answer your questions
even in space
what personal space achievement are you most proud of?
well having been here for
over 300 days I have to say there are a lot of things I've had the opportunity
and privilege to do that have been something to feel proud of for me but
most of all I would say it's giving back and contributing to this program that
I've held in such high regard my entire life giving back to the teams that have
made it possible for me to be here training teams engineering teams
real-time operations teams on the ground and of course my team up here my crew mates.
if you could pick where in space would
you go now station again. Moon. Mars?
I'd have to say
that I would go to Mars and the reason I say that is because I think going deeper
into space and answering some of the most fundamental questions that we have
is one of the most important things we can do at NASA I think that going back
to the moon first to prove out the technologies needed for that deeper
space mission is really important and that's why I'm so excited that's what's
on the horizon for us in the 2020s with the Artemis mission
after nearly a year in space are you ready to come home or would you stay longer?
I would say it's a
little bit of both I am ready to come home and see my friends and loved ones
but I have to say if they could visit here I'd probably stay forever I
absolutely love my job here I love the ability to contribute and I love the
work and I love the people
do you have a favorite photo you've taken since you've
been on station?
well I'd have to say that photography is one of my favorite things and
is my favorite thing to use in my
free time to capture the earth and also the universe around the space station
if I had to pick just one picture I would say it was a picture that I took of the
launch of Jessica Meir, Oleg Skripochka and Ali Almansoori
and it was a picture of them actually in the rocket where the rocket almost looked like a
star and you could see a halo around it of the actual second stage as it started
and firing and it was just such a symbol to me of achieving your dream it was a
beautiful thing that you could never see anywhere else other than here and it
just sort of put a punctuation mark on the idea of a rocket launch and how
awesome of a thing that is to be a part of and to be able to actually witness
with your own eyes
what a great question something that we call expeditionary
skills behaviors and what that means is it's a set of skills that is important
for being productive and doing your best in a close environment that is not
something you're accustomed to on the earth such as the space station
leadership followership group living team care self care communication things
that allow you and your crewmates to basically work at your best every single
day and still get the mission done
there is so much out-of-this-world science
going on up here it's really exciting if you can imagine anything that happens to
just be better served as a scientific question in microgravity than it does on
the earth we can do that up here so that covers all kinds of realms of science
including biology biotechnology physical science Earth and space science
technology demonstrations and even human research on our own bodies
one of the most exciting pieces of science that I've had the opportunity to be involved
in is directed towards developing medicines for fighting some of the
diseases that we all face
you know I think that's a question that we're all
looking to answer right now there's so many different factors
go into that question and the real answer is I think we're not necessarily
limited fundamentally by any one thing it's really just a question of where can
our technology and our innovation take us
one of the reasons I'm so happy that
I've had the opportunity to do an extended mission is that that
contributes to that understanding
definitely the best thing is that you
get a chance to contribute to the coolest work being done in my opinion by
all of humanity I have held this you know human spaceflight in such high
regard my entire life and so to get the opportunity to actually contribute to it
day in and day out is by far the best part about being up here now second I
would say is definitely being able to float
microgravity sure makes it fun to
get around here on the space station we have to work in every orientation we
have stowage on the ceiling we have science experiments on the ceiling and
so it's pretty fun to be able to float around to flip around just to get around
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