Long before the Artemis II mission, Christina Koch was a Chesapeake Bay sailor

Decades before Christina Koch took off for the moon on the historic Artemis II space mission, she was an electrical engineer, sailor and resident of Eastport.

The 47-year-old astronaut, known for her impressive and record-breaking feats in space, spent her postgrad days on the Chesapeake Bay as she worked her first job for the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt. Koch raced with the Goddard Sailing Association and the Severn Sailing Association in the 2000s.

Now, as Koch has become the first woman to venture into deep space, the small bay community is rooting her on from afar.

“I’m just ecstatic to see what she’s done and accomplished,” said Joyce Bolton, who sailed alongside Koch in Eastport and has remained friends with her.

Bolton, who lives in Eastport, described her friend as humble and down-to-earth, even after her many achievements.

“It’s fascinating watching her during the Artemis coverage because she’s just the same person,” she said. “It’s been amazing to watch her.”

Like many sailors in the Annapolis area, Koch and Bolton frequented the Boatyard Bar & Grill in the 2000s. Dick Franyo, the establishment’s owner, said Koch was an “obviously very bright” woman whom he got to know over the years she lived in the area.

She had been working at NASA only a few years when Koch was selected to go to the South Pole for a year as a research associate in the United States Antarctic Program. Franyo and Bolton gave her pieces of Maryland for her journey, including a small burgee from the Boatyard Bar & Grill and a Maritime Republic of Eastport flag.

Koch took photos with both banners at the South Pole to send to her friends. One of them hangs on the wall of Franyo’s restaurant.

“We’ve got about hundreds of pictures in the Boatyard of locals and sailors and all, but that’s really a favorite,” Franyo said.

When Koch returned to Maryland after the South Pole, she joined the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory’s Space Department as an electrical engineer. Two former colleagues at the lab, Steve Jaskulek and Chuck Schlemm, said Koch was a driven but “highly cooperative” person who was always wanting to try new things.

“It was clear she had lots of things she wanted to do in her life,” Jaskulek said. “At the time, we didn’t realize it extended to the moon.”

When she started at the Johns Hopkins lab in 2007, Koch worked on sensors for NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter. Her work also helped scientists understand the radiation risks that astronauts face on the way to the moon, which Jaskulek said was “kind of ironic” now.

Schlemm said he was in the grandstands with his son watching his former colleague and the Artemis II crew liftoff last week.

“It was awesome,” he said.

It wasn’t long before Koch went back into the field to complete research in Antartica and Greenland.

Although Bolton and Koch are no longer Eastport neighbors, Bolton said they have stayed in touch, taken vacations together and visited each other.

During Koch’s 328-day stay at the International Space Station in 2019, Bolton received a call from a Houston phone number. What she thought was a spam call was really her friend trying to get in touch with her from space.

“She was just talking, asking me questions about what I was up to and life on Earth,” Bolton said. “That was so thrilling to hear her voice up there.”

While the two chatted for about an hour and a half, she said, Koch watched the sunrise and sunset as the space station orbited Earth at 17,500 mph. Koch set the record for the longest spaceflight by a woman that year.

Bolton traveled to Florida to see Koch and the Artemis II crew launch to the moon last week. She watched with a group of Koch’s friends and family from around the country. Even though Bolton traveled to Ireland this week, she said, she will stay up to watch Koch return to Earth.

The Artemis II team, which includes Koch, Victor Glover, Jeremy Hansen and Baltimore County’s Reid Wiseman, was heading back toward Earth on Thursday.

You can watch the splashdown off the coast of San Diego live on NASA’s YouTube channel. The Artemis II crew is expected to make its return just after 8 p.m. Friday.