Five-time Space Camp alumna and veteran astronaut Christina Hammock Koch was one of four NASA astronauts named today as the first crew to return to the moon.

NASA and the Canadian Space Agency announced the three NASA astronauts and one Canadian who will fly an Orion capsule around the moon on the Artemis II mission. That mission is set for November 2024 and will test the system’s ability to carry astronauts safely to the moon and back. One of the astronauts chosen, electrical engineer Koch, attended the popular camp in Huntsville every year from 1992 to 1996.

Koch is one of 14 astronauts who came to the camp in Huntsville to learn about space and the space program and participate in simulated missions and training. Eight astronauts came as children and two as college students. Two more who came as children are currently NASA astronaut candidates.

Koch was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, grew up in Jacksonville, North Carolina and resided in Livingston, Montana when she was picked to join the Astronaut Corps. She became a NASA astronaut in 2013 and set a NASA record for the longest spaceflight by a woman with a total of 328 days. She also participated in the first all-female spacewalks.

“Space Camp was a place where I found out I wasn’t the only one dreaming to be a part of of the space program,” Koch said in an interview from aboard the ISS. “I met lifelong friends and people from all over the country. My horizons were widened and I had a new perspective from which to measure my successes and guide my path. And I had incentive. Going to Space Camp was my reward for keeping my grades up.”

Koch launched March 14, 2019 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft along with Roscosmos Cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin and NASA Astronaut Nick Hague. She returned to Earth Feb. 6, 2020 landing in Russian on a Soyuz spacecraft with Roscosmos Cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov and European Space Agency (ESA) Astronaut Luca Parmitano.

Koch was a flight engineer on the space station. NASA said she and her crewmates “contributed to hundreds of experiments in biology, Earth science, human research, physical science and technology development.” Koch went outside on six spacewalks, including the first three all women spacewalks, and totaled more than 42 hours outside the station. She has spent a total of 328 days in space.

After returning to Earth, Koch worked as chief of the Assigned Crew Branch in the Astronaut Office. Before her selection for Artemis, she was the NASA Johnson Space Center Director’s Assistant for Technical Integration.

The U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville is home to Space Camp and the official welcome center for NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. Space Camp was founded in 1982 and has more than 1 million graduates.

The Marshall center has been NASA’s propulsion center since the start of America’s space program. It designed, managed and tested the Space Launch System boosters that will take Koch to the moon. The center also verified the ability of the rocket’s core parts to survive space travel by putting pressure on each major booster section until it collapsed.

(Reckon reporter Abbey Crain contributed to this report)