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Houston: Indian-origin astronaut Sunita Williams has left for space for the third time with another colleague. With this, both of them made history by becoming the first members to go to the International Space Station from Boeing Company’s Starliner spacecraft. Boeing’s ‘Crew Flight Test Mission’ carrying Williams and Butch Wilmore departed from Florida’s ‘Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’ after several delays. Williams also made history as the first woman to go on such a mission.
When will the return be
Williams and Wilmore’s journey is expected to take 25 hours. The spacecraft will reach the space station on Thursday. Both will spend more than a week in the laboratory rotating in space and after that will re-board the Starliner spacecraft to land in a remote desert in western America for return on June 14.
Sunita Williams has experience
NASA selected Sunita Williams as an astronaut in 1988 and she has experience of two space missions. She served as the flight engineer of Expedition 32 and the commander of Expedition 33.
Sunita’s first journey
During her first space journey, Expedition 14/15, Williams flew with the crew of STS-116 on 9 December 2006 and arrived at the International Space Station on 11 December 2006. In her first space journey, she set a world record for women by walking four times in space for a total of 29 hours and 17 minutes. After this, astronaut Peggy Whitson broke this record in 2008 by walking five times in space.
Sunita’s second journey
In Expedition 32/33, Williams flew to space on 14 July 2012 from the Baikonur Cosmodron in Kazakhstan along with Russian Soyuz commander Yuri Malenchenko and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency flight engineer Akihiko Hoshide. At that time, Williams spent four months on research and exploration aboard the orbiting laboratory. She arrived in Kazakhstan on November 18, 2012, after spending 127 days in space. During their mission, Williams and Hoshide conducted three spacewalks and fixed an ammonia leak from the station’s radiator. With a spacewalk of 50 hours and 40 minutes, Williams once again set the world record for the longest spacewalk by a female astronaut.
Also know
Williams was born in Euclid, Ohio, to Indian-American neuroanatomist Deepak Pandya and Slovenian-American Ursuline Bonnie Pandya. She received a physics degree from the US Naval Academy and a Master of Science degree in engineering management from the Florida Institute of Technology.
