Sunita Williams

Sunita Williams is an American astronaut, engineer, and former U.S. Navy officer, best known for her work as a NASA astronaut. Here's a brief overview:

  • Full Name: Sunita Lyn Williams

  • Born: September 19, 1965, in Euclid, Ohio, USA

  • Nationality: American

  • Occupation: Astronaut, U.S. Navy officer, engineer

Sunita Williams was selected as a NASA astronaut in 1998 and has had a distinguished career in space exploration. She is one of the few astronauts who have completed multiple space missions, and she holds the record for the longest spaceflight by a woman at 195 days (on her mission aboard the International Space Station, or ISS).

Notable achievements include:

  • Spacewalks: She has completed seven spacewalks, which was a record for a female astronaut at the time.

  • Space Missions: She participated in STS-116 (a mission to the International Space Station) and Expedition 14/15 (a long-duration stay on the ISS).

  • Training: Williams is also an accomplished engineer and a skilled aviator, which helped her during her missions in space.

Williams is also known for her advocacy of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education, inspiring countless students to pursue careers in space and science fields.

Articles by the author

The food containers come in different varieties: for example, drinks, breakfast type food, meats, vegetables. There are about 5-10 days of that type of food in each container. We try not to open a new container until we finish the one we are on - even if that means going without coffee for a couple of days.

Sunita Williams

There's one downside in comparison to both Soyuz and SpaceX, is that when you go to those places - when I went to Russia, or when I went to California - you're sort of focused on what you're doing. Your family's not there. Your lawn isn't needing to be cut. You're just focusing on what you need to do.

Sunita Williams

We are lucky to live on such a planet, and we should not take it for granted. After my space experience, I am a lot more tolerant of people and opinions, of everything.

Sunita Williams

My siblings and I grew up on Indian food. My mother, though of Slovenian descent, learned to cook Indian delicacies for my father after their wedding.

Sunita Williams

I think after orbiting for a while and looking at the surface, I think the natural tendency is to want to experience it, to go down there and touch it. I started thinking about the Apollo astronauts who orbited the moon and didn't land - that must have been agonizing!

Sunita Williams

When you are thinking about going away for a long duration mission, it has to be part of your mindset that you're leaving your family, but it's for the right reasons, for good reasons, and hopefully helping humanity.

Sunita Williams

Mission Control in Houston receives our e-mails through a satellite and then sends them out to our family and friends. Likewise, any e-mails written to us go through the Mission Control, and then they send them up to us via a satellite.

Sunita Williams

The Progress is launched from Baikonur in Kazakhstan, just like the Soyuz. It almost looks the same as the Soyuz but unmanned, so, essentially filled up with supplies for us - anything from food, science experiments, repair parts, etc., can go in it.

Sunita Williams

I don't feel like a hero - just another person involved in the space business. I'm hoping to encourage young folks to become explorers.

Sunita Williams

You can hover in the air if you want, or you can push off of something and glide through the air - just like a fish. I also think it is like being a fish, since you can catch food in your mouth easily because it is suspended in the air - just like when you put fish food in a tank - the fish swim up to it, open their mouths, and eat the food.

Sunita Williams

I love anything paneer! Our family favorite, however, is 'Dal Dhokli,' a quintessential Gujarati dish of bread dumplings and lentil soup. That's the big meal of the week typically prepared by my mother on Sundays.

Sunita Williams

The space walks were amazing with the incredible views.

Sunita Williams

It's just this beautiful laboratory in space, and it's doing a lot of really cool things. So being up there and just being able to fly through that big station one more time and do some experiments while you're up there and get that view out of the cupola... priceless.

Sunita Williams

On the second flight, we were doing a lot of science experiments, and we've got a really cool window called the cupola. It's a big, circular window with six panes around, sort of at angles so you can see the Earth, you can see the edge of the Earth, you can go out - look out into the universe. It's pretty spectacular.

Sunita Williams

Funny how words in one language get used in another language. For example, 'scotch' in Russian is tape and 'pampers' means diapers.

Sunita Williams

It's - I mean, the Olympics, what is it? It's an international competition to foster friendship and - and competition across - across the planet, and I think that's exactly what the International Space Station is.

Sunita Williams

NASA, like every government organization, has some bureaucracy, which can become slimmer.

Sunita Williams

The International Space Station is a great place to live for a year.

Sunita Williams

I do hope there are other wonderful planets living and thriving out there, but ours is special because it is ours and ours to take care of. We really can't take that too lightly.

Sunita Williams

When you're faced with something for the first time, and if you're scared to death of that, you might want to reconcile your life beforehand.

Sunita Williams