NASA astronaut Christina Koch, who spent a record-breaking 328 days in space, has safely returned to Earth along with her crewmates Soyuz Commander Alexander Skvortsov (Roscosmos) and Luca Parmitano (European Space Agency), according to a report by NASA. Koch now holds the record for the single longest spaceflight by a woman and played a role in another historic moment, the first all-women spacewalk with fellow NASA astronaut Jessica Meir. The highlight of Koch and Meir’s spacewalk came last October when they corrected Donald Trump, who incorrectly said they were the first-ever women to conduct a spacewalk. It’s unimaginable how painful it must be for a creature like Trump to be corrected by two women literally hovering above him in the heavens.
As disappointing as it must be to return to Earth in its current condition, Koch’s extended time on the international space station and her six spacewalks will provide valuable information on the effects of zero gravity on women’s bodies as NASA prepares to launch more people off of this dying planet and into space. Koch orbited Earth 5,248 times before returning, no doubt using each orbit to contemplate whether coming back was worth it or not. Being a benevolent space ruler, Koch also used her time to study plant biology focusing on how plants grow in space so when the first colonists on Mars get hungry, they’ll be able to fend for themselves instead of massacring the indigenous Martians for some corn. The greens grown in space were frozen and brought back to Earth for further study, according to CNN.
Koch also aided in mounting a scanner to the outside of the space station to study carbon dioxide emissions and absorption which will allow scientists to track more accurately the moment Earth will be immeasurably and irreversibly fucked by global warming. She wrote of the moment on her Instagram, “Off the Earth, for the Earth. Another amazing science instrument mounted outside [Internationl Space Station], this one scanning Earth to study carbon dioxide emission and absorption on scales as never before. The [NASA Jet Propulsion Lab] Orbiting Carbon Observatory-3 brings environmental studies to a whole new level!”
The Earth is humbled to house a woman so magnanimous who looked down upon a planet of idiots killing each other for land and money and thought it was worth it to come back for the sake of science. Welcome home, Christina Koch.