How to Survive Pandemic Reentry
After falling miles through the atmosphere, Christina Koch emerged from her space capsule with a big smile on her face. The NASA astronaut had spent 328 days on the International Space Station. When she finally touched back down last month, the warmth of the sun on her skin felt glorious. And as she laid eyes on the dozens of search-and-rescue workers around the capsule, her brain raced to process the new faces.
“I only interacted in person with 11 other humans over the course of almost a year,” Koch told me. “Just seeing [new people] immediately when I came out of the capsule was definitely shocking.”
On the day Koch landed in early February, the Houston Chronicle, NASA Mission Control’s hometown paper, ran a picture of her on the front page. Below it was an article reporting that, although there were no confirmed cases in Texas, business owners were worried about the effects of the new coronavirus.
Koch got a taste. Now she has found herself cooped up again, this time in her home in Galveston, Texas. Koch has returned to a uniquely anxious time on Earth, but she is unusually well prepared for the situation: Astronauts spend six months or longer away from their loved ones, living and working on a station about the size of a six-bedroom house, with personal quarters the size of phone booths, interacting with the same handful of people, orbit after orbit. It’s not entirely unlike .
