Christina Koch will be the first woman astronaut from NASA to stay the longest on ISS

News24xx.com - NASA female Astronaut Christina Koch will stay on the International Space Station (ISS) for a year. This decision broke the record for the longest NASA's first female astronaut who underwent a mission on the ISS.

Reported by Space, Koch first traveled to space on March 14 ago with two colleagues named Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin and will orbit for 328 days. The three will return to Earth in February 2020. Another colleague, Andrew Morgan, who is scheduled to make his first flight into space in July, will also remain in orbit longer than usual and will return to Earth in spring of 2020.

Previously, Scott Kelly held the record for NASA's longest space flight for 340 days. However, it was touted that Koch will surpass Kelly's current record for the longest single space flight carried out by a woman. The newly announced schedule is the result of an agreement between NASA and Russian space agency Roscosmos and other ISS partners.

The space station's mission usually lasts for 6.5 months. One reason NASA extends their astronauts to stay longer on the ISS is to collect more data, related to how the human body reacts to longer space flight.

"Astronauts will show resilience and adaptability in response to long-term spaceflight exposure" NASA's Head of Human Research Program Scientist Jennifer Fogarty was quoted as saying by NASA. "NASA wants to build on what we have learned to what happened to astronauts in space for more than 250 days"

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