The sweet moment astronaut Christina Koch reunited with her dog after 328 days in space

Christina Koch set a new record for longest single spaceflight for a woman.

ByABC NEWS
February 13, 2020, 7:13 PM

When astronaut Christina Koch returned home this week from a nearly 11-month space mission, she said she wasn't "sure who was more excited" about it: her or her dog.

The record-breaking astronaut posted a video to her Twitter on Thursday showing the joyous reunion during which her rescue dog, LBD (short for Little Brown Dog), couldn't contain herself.

"Not sure who was more excited. Glad she remembers me after a year!" Koch, 41, said in the Twitter post.

Koch returned to her Galveston, Texas, home three days after landing in Kazakhstan from a 328-day mission to the International Space Station, The Associated Press reported. The trip shattered the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman, which was previously held by retired NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, who set the record with 288 days in space in 2017.

PHOTO: NASA Astronaut Christina Koch answers questions during a postflight news conference at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Feb. 12, 2020.
NASA Astronaut Christina Koch answers questions during a postflight news conference at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Feb. 12, 2020.
AFP via Getty Images, FILE

"I didn’t necessarily know what this mission was going to turn into when I launched," Koch told ABC News' senior transportation correspondent David Kerley in an interview from the space station last month. "But I think one of the things about the astronaut corps is that we are taught to be adaptable and to be ready for anything in a mission that comes our way."

Koch, an electrical engineer, was part of the first-ever all-woman spacewalk along with fellow U.S. astronaut Jessica Weir in 2019.

Related Topics