Longest spaceflight by a woman
Who
Christina Koch
What
328:13:58:12 day(s):hour(s):minute(s)
Where
Not Applicable ()
When

The longest single spaceflight by a woman is 328 days, set by NASA astronaut Christina Koch (USA) between 14 March 2019 and 6 February 2020.

This marathon mission was Christina Koch's first ever spaceflight. She was accepted as part of NASA Astronaut Group 21 in 2013, having previously studied electrical engineering and worked at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the United States Antarctic Program (overwintering in Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station), and at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (helping design and build the Juno probe). She completed her training, and was placed on NASA's active astronaut roster for possible flights to the International Space Station, in 2015.

Koch left Earth in the Soyuz MS-12 capsule alongside veteran cosmonaut Aleksey Ovchinin and fellow NASA astronaut Nick Hague. The rocket launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 19:14 (UTC) and docked with the International Space Station at 01:01 (UTC) the following day (5 hours and 53 minutes later).

Koch launched to the ISS near the beginning of an intensive period of station upgrades and maintenance spacewalks. She made her first spacewalk alongside Nick Hague just 10 days after her arrival at the station, and in October she took part in three back-to-back spacewalks in just 12 days, ending with the first all-female spacewalk (with fellow NASA astronaut Jessica Meir) on 18 October 2019. In total, Koch made six spacewalks during her time on the station, taking her from an unflown astronaut to the third-most experienced female spacewalker of all time (after Peggy Whitson, with 10 career spacewalks, and Sunita Williams, with seven).

She was originally supposed to return on 3 October 2019, but crew-assignment changes related to delays with NASA's Commercial Crew Program meant that her stay was extended to February 2020. Her 328-day stay surpassed the record of 288 days set by Peggy Whitson between 2016 and 2017. She departed the ISS at 05:50 (UTC) on 6 February 2020 alongside cosmonaut Aleksandr Skvortsov and ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano (who both arrived on the ISS in July 2019). The Soyuz MS-13 capsule touched down on the Kazakh steppe at around 09:12 (UTC).

To date, the longest single spaceflight overall was by Russian doctor Valeriy Poliyakov (b. 27 April 1942), who was launched to the Mir space station aboard Soyuz TM18 on 8 January 1994 and landed in Soyuz TM20 on 22 March 1995 – a total duration of 437 days 17 hours 58 minutes.