Don’t expect any of the Artemis II moon astronauts to fly again soon.
On Tuesday (Oct. 13), NASA announced that Artemis II mission specialist Christina Koch will become the agency’s acting deputy chief engineer, effective Nov. 1.
“With this appointment, Koch will transition to management astronaut status and will no longer be eligible for future spaceflight assignments,” NASA officials wrote in a statement on Tuesday.
Her three Artemis II crewmates had already shared their next moves, none of which put another spaceflight in play in the near future.
Mission commander Reid Wiseman and pilot Victor Glover, both of NASA, became “emeritus” astronauts last month, a role that seems to include planning, advising and mentoring duties but no flights into the final frontier. Glover will also work full-time at his alma mater, the California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) in San Luis Obispo.
“I’m grateful they will continue sharing what they learned with our astronauts, flight controllers and engineers as we prepare for Artemis III in 2027 and the missions that follow,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said of Wiseman and Glover in a Sept. 9 statement.
The fourth Artemis II astronaut, mission specialist Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency, announced a change of his own in July: He planned to become a reservist in the Royal Canadian Air Force, where he’s also a colonel. That move became official last month as well.
Artemis II sent the four astronauts on a 10-day trip around the moon in an Orion capsule. It was the first crewed mission of NASA’s Artemis program and the first human spaceflight beyond low Earth orbit (LEO) since Apollo 17 in 1972.
As Isaacman mentioned, the next mission in the program is Artemis III, a docking test in LEO scheduled to launch next year. The Artemis III crew, which was announced in June, consists of NASA astronauts Randy Bresnik (commander), Andre Douglas and Frank Rubio (mission specialists) and Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency (pilot).
If all goes according to plan, Artemis IV will land astronauts near the moon’s south pole in 2028. We don’t yet know who will fly on that historic mission.
Koch will succeed current NASA Deputy Chief Engineer Katherine Van Hooser, who will retire on Oct. 21 after more than 35 years of work for the space agency.
“In her new role, Koch will help lead NASA’s engineering community, supporting technical oversight, mission readiness, and engineering excellence across the agency’s programs and projects,” agency officials said in Tuesday’s statement.
Koch is a natural choice for the job, given her education and experience. She holds bachelor’s degrees in electrical engineering and physics and a master’s in electrical engineering, and she began her NASA career as an electrical engineer at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.
NASA selected Koch as an astronaut candidate in 2013. She has two spaceflights under her belt: Artemis II and a 328-day-flight to the International Space Station that launched in March 2019. That’s the longest space mission ever conducted by a woman, and it featured the first three all-female spacewalks, which Koch conducted with fellow NASA astronaut Jessica Meir.
“Christina has seen NASA engineering from both sides of the equation: developing complex systems on the ground and trusting them with her life in space,” Isaacman said in the Tuesday statement.
“After spending nearly a year living and working aboard the International Space Station and helping lead America back around the moon on Artemis II this year, she brings an extraordinary combination of technical expertise, operational experience, and judgment to this role,” he added. “I am excited to see the impact she will have across NASA as we return Americans to the lunar surface, build the Moon Base, get underway on nuclear power in space, and develop the capabilities that will ultimately take us on to Mars.”