Welcome home! NC astronaut Christina Koch returns to Earth

Koch, a Jacksonville native, has been living on the International Space Station since last March. On Thursday, she landed in Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, at 4:12 a.m. EST, or 3:12 p.m. Kazakhstan time, with two colleagues aboard a Russian capsule. Koch will then fly to Germany before returning home to Houston.

She conducted six spacewalks, totaling 42 hours and 15 minutes outside the space station, including the first all-female spacewalk.

On Jan. 28 – her 319th consecutive day in space – Koch told The Associated Press that taking part in the all-female spacewalk was the highlight of her mission.

"Her longevity in space is what's really important about her mission," NASA Ambassador Tony Rice said. "It's helping us understand how the human body reacts, particularly the female human body, during long-term space flight. If we want to make it to Mars, we need to understand that a little bit better."

Koch and crewmate Luca Parmitano also experimented it a micro-gravity oven, baking five chocolate chip cookies from scratch. The experiment discovered that what normally requires 16 to 18 minutes on Earth took more than two hours and a slightly higher temperature – and were surprisingly unaffected by microgravity.

While science will gain from her experience, Koch said she gained from the adventure of a lifetime. Her last tweet from space was about what she'll miss: "The exquisite beauty of both the planet Earth and this marvel that its amazing people created."

NASA is planning to send astronauts back to the moon by 2024, and Koch has said that she wouldn't mind being the first woman on the moon.