Sunita Lyn Williams

Sunita Williams was born in 1965. Her great-great-grandmother is from Leš near Tržič in today’s Slovenia. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in physical sciences from the United States Naval Academy in 1987 and a master’s degree in engineering management from the Florida Institute of Technology in 1995.

In May 1987, she became a member of the U.S. Navy. She then worked as a test pilot and security officer for the Naval Directorate of Helicopters, and later as a flight instructor at the School for Test Pilots and flight supervisor on the USS Saipan amphibious landing ship. She has more than 3,000 hours of flight time on more than 30 different aircraft.

In June 1998, she was selected as a candidate for NASA’s space flight program. After completing her training, she worked at the Russian Space Agency on a program of cooperation with the International Space Station. She first flew into space on December 9, 2006, aboard the Discovery rocket plane as a member of the 14th International Space Station expedition, where she also remained on the 15th expedition and set a female record for the duration of her stay in open space for the first time with four spacewalks. In 2012, she flew again to the International Space Station with the Soyuz mission, as a member of expeditions 32 and 33, with the latter as the station commander. She was the second woman to hold the position of International Space Station Commander. During her second expedition, she took three walks in open space, during which she made repairs to the exterior of the station, and again took the women’s record for the duration of her stay in open space.

Sunita Williams spent a total of 322 days in space on two missions. Her open space-time, 50 hours and 40 minutes, is the sixth-longest open space-time of American astronauts of all time. Her 195 days is still the female record for the longest space flight and the largest number of open space exits: seven.

In 2015, she was selected as one of NASA’s first astronauts for commercial spaceflight and now works for Boeing and SpaceX. In 2018, she was appointed commander of a flight with a Boeing CST-100 Starliner to the International Space Station (ISS) - expected in 2021