{"id":245370,"date":"2026-10-14T05:07:35","date_gmt":"2026-10-14T10:07:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/nasa-names-astronaut-christina-koch-acting-deputy-chief-engineer"},"modified":"2026-10-14T05:07:35","modified_gmt":"2026-10-14T10:07:35","slug":"nasa-names-astronaut-christina-koch-acting-deputy-chief-engineer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/nasa-names-astronaut-christina-koch-acting-deputy-chief-engineer","title":{"rendered":"NASA Names Astronaut Christina Koch Acting Deputy Chief Engineer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/nasa-names-astronaut-christina-koch-acting-deputy-chief-engineer.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>NASA engineer and astronaut Christina Koch will serve as the agency\u2019s acting deputy chief engineer beginning on Sunday, Nov. 1, following the retirement of Katherine Van Hooser, who will conclude more than 35 years of distinguished service to the agency on Wednesday, Oct. 21.<\/p>\n<p>In her new role, Koch will help lead NASA\u2019s engineering community, supporting technical oversight, mission readiness, and engineering excellence across the agency\u2019s programs and projects. With this appointment, Koch will transition to management astronaut status and will no longer be eligible for future spaceflight assignments.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cChristina has seen NASA engineering from both sides of the equation: developing complex systems on the ground and trusting them with her life in space,\u201d said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. \u201cAfter spending nearly a year living and working aboard the International Space Station and helping lead America back around the Moon on Artemis II this year, she brings an extraordinary combination of technical expertise, operational experience, and judgment to this role. I am excited to see the impact she will have across NASA as we return Americans to the lunar surface, build the Moon Base, get underway on nuclear power in space, and develop the capabilities that will ultimately take us on to Mars.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NASA engineer and astronaut Christina Koch will serve as the agency\u2019s acting deputy chief engineer beginning on Sunday, Nov. 1, following the retirement of Katherine Van Hooser, who will conclude more than 35 years of distinguished service to the agency on Wednesday, Oct. 21. In her new role, Koch will help lead NASA\u2019s engineering community, [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1902,41,873,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-245370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bioengineering","category-information-science","category-nuclear-energy","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245370\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}