Artemis II astronaut Christina Koch met Joel Embiid, watched the Eagles from space, and is a Flyers diehard

Christina Koch was born in Michigan, and raised in North Carolina, but when the astronaut went on her first mission to space, in 2019, she found herself missing a team that wasn’t in either state.

It was the Philadelphia Eagles. Koch’s husband, Bob Koch, is from West Deptford, N.J., and a massive fan, and on Sundays, they’d watch NFL games with friends.

She didn’t think she’d miss it until she was thousands of miles away from Earth.

“I don’t think I realized how much I loved it until I wasn’t there,” Koch told The Inquirer on Saturday. “Before my mission, I never requested that I would want to watch Eagles games in space. But once I was there, I absolutely wanted to.”

» READ MORE: Artemis II astronaut Christina Koch is a big Philly sports fan — and even watches games from space

NASA made an exception for her. Koch, who was in space for 328 consecutive days — the longest single spaceflight by a woman — had NFL Network uplinked to her station so she could view her team remotely.

After that, she was hooked.

“By the end of my mission, the whole ground team knew that I would want every single Eagles game up-linked,” she said. “And it was a whole thing.

“Like on the weekends, they would just change the channel to the Eagles game automatically for me. My crew mates knew I was going to set up the projector and just kick back and watch.”

Koch’s most recent mission was as a member of the Artemis II crew, during which she traveled as far as 252,756 miles from Earth.

She and her husband were guests of the Flyers at Xfinity Mobile Arena on Saturday night, for Game 4 of the Eastern Conference semifinals against the Hurricanes.

It was a thrill for both of them, but especially for Bob, who says the Flyers are his favorite team of the four Philly sports franchises.

He grew up skating for Guy Gaudreau at Hollydell Ice Arena, where he met Rod Brind’Amour a few times, and learned the nuances of the game.

The Koch parents were such big Flyers fans that they first met their future daughter-in-law at a game in 2014. At one point, during a power play, Bob Koch Sr. stood up.

Bob Jr. and Christina exchanged a look.

“He was like, hip thrusting during the power play,” Christina recalled. “I mean, you can’t make this up. Bob was like ‘Yeah, nothing gets testosterone going like a good power play.’ And I was like ‘OK!’”

The couple got married in 2015, but Christina didn’t become a Philly sports convert overnight. It was more of a slow burn, with a few experiences that helped along the way.

One came in November 2016. The 76ers were in Houston, and visited the NASA Johnson Space Center during their off day.

Koch immediately volunteered to give them a tour. She talked quite a bit with a young rookie named Joel Embiid, who had recently started his NBA career after a few injury setbacks.

Koch had studied abroad in West Africa, and bonded with the Sixers center about his upbringing in Cameroon. She also showed him and his teammates a simulated space station.

The astronaut brought the team to a mockup of a bedroom on the station, which the 6-foot and 7-foot players found amusing (especially Jahlil Okafor).

“It was really like a tiny version of a phone booth,” she said. “I have a picture of them in there. They can barely fit.”

Ever since her 11-month mission in 2019, Koch has been a diehard fan (a trait she says is her husband’s “fault.”)

She is not above teasing her colleagues, many of whom are Cowboys fans, even when she is up in the ether.

The two Eagles-Cowboys games in 2019 were particularly contentious.

“I couldn’t tell you the winner or anything like that, but there were people that worked at NASA that were Cowboys fans, so it was a whole thing,” she said. “I was up there for pretty much the whole [2019-20] season.”

She added: “Especially on the weekends, we have a lot of fun with our ground teams. Things are a lot more relaxed. So you can throw in a ‘Go Birds’ on the loops and it can be heard from space to earth.”

While Koch is a passionate fan, she isn’t donning Phillies, Eagles and Flyers gear, and listening to 94.1 WIP segments in space, just for the sake of it.

The astronaut says it genuinely helps her feel connected to Bob and his family when she is an orbit away.

(It also happens to be the perfect place to let out any pent-up Philly sports frustration).

“I tried not to wake anyone up if I was watching [games] late, but definitely on the weekends, I could yell,” she said. “Like a proper Eagles fan.”