Christina Koch 2026 Princess of Asturias Award for Concord

Your Majesties,
Your Royal Highnesses,
Members of the Princess of Asturias Foundation,
Laureates,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

I humbly accept this award with a promise to embody the values of integrity and unity. And I also accept with an assertion: that this award for Concord is everyone’s award. 

The first time I was in Spain, I found myself crying openly on a sidewalk.  I was a recent college graduate working my dream job as a NASA engineer, an aspiring astronaut visiting my sister while she studied abroad here.  I was staring at a newspaper headline.  The words were clear but I was in disbelief: We had lost the crew of the Columbia shuttle, my astronaut heroes. My mind hoped that somehow something was lost in translation, that if I ran home, the papers would tell a different story.
But, no, going to space is humanity’s endeavor, and sidewalks around the world were all relaying the tragedy. Our ambassadors of Earth, riders of spaceships, had given the ultimate sacrifice and the world mourned.

Fast forward ten years to when I got a call that I could ride spaceships.  I accepted that privilege with knowledge of its universality. Because that day on the sidewalk, I learned that my heroes were everyone’s heroes.  I learned that the impacts of human spaceflight are well beyond the borders of the country that launches the rocket. When people leave our planet, the world takes them into their hearts. And with that, is a responsibility. That is why, when my Artemis II crew was forming its core values, we adopted a slogan that was rooted in what I had learned on the sidewalk.  “We go for all, and by all.”  We said it again and again, we wove it into our mission patch, and we lived it in our interactions. 

Fast forward 13 years and I found myself crying again, this time from nearly a quarter million miles, nearly 400 kilometers, away, the moon getting smaller out the window of the capsule. My husband and I were on a scratchy video call when he took up a serious tone that told me it was important to listen, even over the noise of Victor exercising a meter away. He said something was happening, that people were coming together, no matter where they were from, their politics, their education or means.  He said we were making a difference. I listened, again in disbelief. I dabbed the spheres of tears that had formed on my eyes and I said, “That’s all we ever wanted.”

But today, I want more.  I want everyone to accept this award. For taking this mission into your hearts and letting it soften you to let it unite you.  For believing when we share that all humans have the same thing at their core: a need to feel love.  Somehow, the electric blue lifeboat that hung impossibly, quietly, hypnotically, and small enough to be behind your thumb, Earth, evolved a species that chooses each other. You proved it, by your reaction, to a mission that turned out to be a human experiment.

But there is another interpretation, and that is that it took sending humans around the moon to let love win. And so, your award assignment is this.  Do it every day.  Don’t wait for the next moon mission to embody that your fellow humans are your crewmates. Artemis doesn’t have to be an anomaly in an otherwise “crazy world.”  Choose the world you want to live in with every interaction on every sidewalk. Choose to live recognizing that true fulfillment comes from giving and not receiving. Trust. Give grace. Listen. Be vulnerable.

Spain, your second gift to me is this award, here on a royal stage.  But your first gift to me was simply caring about other humans, on the most important stage: an everyday sidewalk, on planet Earth.

Gracias.