SUNITA WILLIAMS

Sunita Lyn "Suni" Williams (born September 19, 1965 in Euclid, Ohio) is a United States Naval officer and a NASA astronaut. She was assigned to the International Space Station as a member of Expedition 14 and then joined Expedition 15. Williams is the second woman of Indian heritage to have been selected by NASA for a space mission after Kalpana Chawla and the second astronaut of Slovenian heritage after Ronald M. Sega. She holds three records for female space travelers: longest spaceflight (195 days), number of space walks (four), and total time spent on spacewalks (29 hours and 17 minutes).

NASA CAREER:
Selected by NASA in June 1998, Williams began her training in August 1998. Her Astronaut Candidate training included orientation briefings and tours, numerous scientific and technical briefings, intensive instruction in Shuttle and International Space Station systems, physiological training and ground school to prepare for T-38 flight training, as well as learning water and wilderness survival techniques. Following a period of training and evaluation, Williams worked in Moscow with the Russian Space Agency on the Russian contribution to the ISS, and with the first expedition crew sent to the ISS. Following the return of Expedition 1, Williams worked within the Robotics branch on the ISS Robotic Arm and the related Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator. She was a crewmember on the NEEMO 2 mission, living underwater in the Aquarius habitat for nine days in May 2002.

Williams was a mission specialist on STS-117. She was launched on the Space Shuttle mission STS-116, aboard the shuttle Discovery, on December 10, 2006 to join the Expedition 14 crew. In April 2007, the Russian members of the crew rotated, changing to Expedition 15. She returned to Earth on June 22, 2007 at the end of the STS-117 mission.

Williams performed her first extra-vehicular activity on the eighth day of the STS-116 mission. On January 31, February 4, and February 9, 2007, she completed three spacewalks from the ISS with Michael Lopez-Alegria. During one of these walks a camera became untethered, probably due to failure of the attaching device, and floated off to space, before Williams could react.[10]

On the third spacewalk, Williams was in space for 6 hours 40 minutes to complete an unprecedented three space walks in nine days. She has logged 29 hours and 17 minutes in four space walks, eclipsing the record held by Kathryn C. Thornton for most spacewalk time by a woman.

Following the decision on April 26, 2007 to bring Williams back to earth on the STS-117 mission aboard Atlantis, did not break the U.S. single spaceflight record that was recently broken by former crewmember Commander Michael Lopez-Alegria. However she did break the record for longest single spaceflight by a woman.Space shuttle Atlantis touched down at the Edwards Air Force Base in California on Friday bringing Indian-American astronaut Sunita Williams back to earth after a record 195-day stay in space.

The spacecraft touched down at 03:49 EDT on June 22, 2007.

Mission managers had to divert Atlantis to Edwards in the Mojave Desert as poor weather at the Kennedy Space Centre in Cape Canaveral forced mission managers to skip three landing attempts there over the last 24 hours.

“Welcome back, congratulations on a great mission,” NASA mission control told Sunita and six other members of the crew soon after the shuttle landed.

After the landing, 41-year-old Sunita was chosen ‘Person of the Week’ by the ABC Television Network. In December, the network noted, she had her long hair cut so she could donate her locks to help those who lost their hair while fighting an illness.

Sunita also set the world record for a female astronaut on spacewalks, totalling 29 hours and 17 minutes, ABC said. She proved that she could not only walk in space but also run. For, when her sister Dina Pandya ran the Boston Marathon on April 16, she ran her own marathon in space using a treadmill suspended by gyroscopes to minimise any impact of pounding feet on the space station.