Koch, who became the first woman to journey around the moon, shared a video on Friday struggling to perform a tandem walk with her eyes closed. The video comes nearly a week after Koch, Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman and Jeremy Hansen successfully splashdown on Earth after their lunar trip.
“Guess I’ll be waiting a minute to surf again,” Koch said on Instagram.
She also went on to explain why the lunar trip messed with her balance and the science behind it all.
“When people live in microgravity, the systems in our body that have evolved to tell our brains how we’re moving, the vestibular organs, don’t work correctly. Our brains learn to ignore those signals and so when we first get back to gravity, we are heavily reliant on our eyes to orient ourselves visually,” she said. “A tandem walk with eyes closed can be quite the challenge! Learning about this can help inform how we treat vertigo, concussions and other neuro-vestibular conditions on Earth.”
“Luckily we’re already adapting back to gravity at 7 days post-splashdown,” she said.
Since their return, the four astronauts have endured round after round of medical testing to check their balance, vision, muscle strength and coordination, and overall health. They even put on spacewalking suits for exercises under conditions simulating the moon’s one-sixth gravity of Earth to see how much endurance and dexterity future moonwalkers might have upon lunar touchdown.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.