Yesterday, the Artemis II mission blasted off to send humans to the moon for the first time since 1972. Its astronauts will achieve a number of firsts just by getting there. Jeremy Hansen will become the first Canadian to orbit the moon. Victor Glover, the pilot, will become the first Black man to circle it. And Christina Koch will become the first woman to do so.

Koch was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, but grew up in Jacksonville, North Carolina, which she considers to be her hometown. She then went on to the North Carolina School of Science and Math in Durham before earning three degrees from North Carolina State University. Afterward, her career took her all around the world: To the South Pole, Greenland, and Alaska. In 2013, she joined NASA’s astronaut program. Six years later, she blasted off for a record-breaking stay on the International Space Station (328 days, the longest ever spaceflight for a woman), and was part of the first female-only spacewalk.

During her time on the ISS, I was somehow able to convince NASA to let me interview Koch as she zoomed around the skies, nearly 250 miles above the earth (If you’re wondering how this technically works: NASA calls you on the phone, and then patches you through to space). I got 10 minutes to ask her any number of questions, including how her time in this state helped put her on the path that she’s on today. “No one ever discouraged the girl from North Carolina that had a dream to become an astronaut,” she told me, “and I think that was the most important thing.”

That interview was part of a 2019 episode of Away Message (which is now the North Carolina Rabbit Hole podcast). In it, I went and found one of Koch’s teachers at the North Carolina School of Science and Math, who had aspirations to be an astronaut herself. I dropped that episode back into the podcast feed today. You can listen to it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube.

Since this episode aired, Koch received an honorary doctorate from NC State, which held a watch party for yesterday’s launch.