Sunita Williams
Sunita Williams is a prominent astronaut and former United States Navy pilot, known for her significant contributions to space exploration. Born in 1965 to a family with diverse cultural backgrounds, she was raised in Needham, Massachusetts, where she showed early interest in athletics and science. After attending the United States Naval Academy and graduating in 1987, Williams became a helicopter pilot and served in the Gulf War. Her inspiration to become an astronaut was sparked by witnessing the Apollo moon landing as a child.
Selected as a NASA astronaut in 1998, Williams completed extensive training and made her first spaceflight in December 2006 aboard the space shuttle Discovery. During her missions, she set several records, including those for the longest spacewalk by a woman and the most cumulative time in space for a female astronaut at the time. Williams also made history as the first astronaut to run a marathon in space and participated in various missions to the International Space Station (ISS), where she engaged in significant scientific research and outreach activities. Her achievements highlight her role in advancing diversity within NASA and her influence as a symbol of inspiration for future generations in the fields of science and engineering.
Subject Terms
Sunita Williams
- Born: September 19, 1965
- Birthplace: Euclid, Ohio
Astronaut
United States Navy captain Sunita Williams is a highly versatile pilot and astronaut who set several records while in space as both a woman and an Asian American. She is best known for her work on the International Space Station and her space walks.
Full name: Sunita Lyn Pandya Williams
Birth name: Sunita Lyn Pandya
Also known as: Suni Williams
Early Life
Sunita Williams was born to Deepak N. Pandya, a neuroanatomist from the Indian state of Gujarat, and Ursuline "Bonnie" Zalokar Pandya, an x-ray technician of Slovenian ancestry from Cleveland, Ohio. When her father accepted a new appointment in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1966, the family moved to nearby Needham, where Williams was raised and graduated from high school in 1983. She was active in athletics, especially competitive swimming, and contemplated a career in veterinary medicine because she loved animals.
When both Columbia University and the United States Naval Academy offered Williams admission, she selected the latter, in part because she could avoid assuming student loans, and in part because her brother Jay was already enrolled there. After graduating in the middle of her Naval Academy class in 1987, Williams attended flight school in Pensacola, Florida. In 1989, she joined a helicopter support squadron in Norfolk, Virginia, and was deployed to the Middle East as part of Operation Desert Shield in 1990 and Operation Provide Comfort in 1991 during the first Gulf War.
In 1969, a nearly four-year-old Williams had watched Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walk on the moon, but never imagined that she might become an astronaut herself. However, after meeting several astronauts at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, Williams realized she had many of the skills necessary for piloting spacecraft. She graduated from the United States Naval Test Pilot School in Patuxent, Maryland, in 1993 and in 1995 earned a master’s degree in engineering management from the Florida Institute of Technology. In 1998, NASA selected her for astronaut training.
Life’s Work
As a new NASA astronaut, Williams received extensive training in additional skills, including water and wilderness survival techniques, piloting the supersonic T-38 training jet, and operating robotic arms. She lived underwater for eight days in NASA’s Aquarius laboratory in 2002. As a result of working with the Russian Space Agency in Moscow, Williams learned to speak Russian, a talent that proved useful when she served with Russian flight engineers on board the International Space Station (ISS).
Williams first traveled into space in December 2006 on board the space shuttleDiscovery. She brought with her a copy of the Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita and a statue of Ganesha, the Hindu god of beginnings, from her Hindu father, as well as a Christian cross from her Slovenian Catholic grandmother. After docking with the International Space Station, Williams joined Expedition 14 and then remained with Expedition 15 until June 2007. In all, Williams spent 195 days on the station, establishing a record for space endurance by women that stood until Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti surpassed it in 2015. During these two expeditions, Williams also logged 29 hours, 17 minutes, of walking in space, setting a new record for women until it was broken by astronaut Peggy Whitson in 2008. She also became the second Indian American to visit space.
Several noteworthy events occurred during Williams’s six months in space. Shortly after arriving, her long black hair was cut by fellow astronaut Joan Higginbotham and brought back to Earth, where it was donated to children who had lost their hair due to medical problems. In April 2007, while the Boston Marathon was taking place in her home state of Massachusetts, Williams became the first astronaut to run a marathon in space. Williams ran the 26.2 miles in 4 hours, 23 minutes, and 46 seconds, while strapped to a stationary treadmill inside the ISS. In May 2007, she spoke with Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain via video communication.
By 2011, Williams had logged more than three thousand flight hours as a Navy pilot in more than thirty different aircraft, rising in rank to captain. She then took part in Expedition 32/33 on board the ISS in 2012. This time she completed a triathalon, using a stationary bicycle and a weightlifting mechanism that stood in for the swimming leg of the race. Her spacewalks on this mission gave her once again the record for total spacewalk hours for a female astronaut, though she was again later surpassed by Whitson. Williams's total time in space after the mission placed her sixth all-time among all US astronauts and second to Whitson among women.
Williams was selected in 2015 to be one of four astronauts to test NASA's program for commercial spaceflight. She trained to operate spacecraft built by private companies to bring crew members and equipment to the ISS, including the Dragon by SpaceX and the CST-100 Starliner by Boeing. In 2018, NASA made the announcement that she had been one of the astronauts selected to serve as the crew aboard the CST-100 Starliner during its first planned crewed mission to the ISS, and the first uncrewed test was conducted in late 2019.
Significance
Williams had a groundbreaking career as an astronaut, achieving important milestones for diversity in NASA's space program. She was only the second astronaut of Indian heritage to fly in space, and she set records for the longest spacewalk and cumulative spaceflight for a woman. Her numerous honors include two Navy Commendation Medals, the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal, and the Humanitarian Service Medal. She also received international awards such as Russia’s Medal of Merit in Space and India’s Sardar Vallabhai Patel Vishwa Pratibha Award.
Bibliography
Horowitz-Ghazi, Alexi, and Emily Sullivan. "A NASA Astronaut Stays in Orbit with SpaceX and Boeing." NPR, 25 Mar. 2018, www.npr.org/2018/03/25/596208439/a-nasa-astronaut-stays-in-orbit-with-spacex-and-boeing. Accessed 20 Nov. 2018.
Kanin, Zachary. "One Small Step." New Yorker 83.15 (2007): 47. Print.
Mahanti, Subodh. Pioneer of Space Travel, Sunita Williams. New Delhi: Indian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, 2007. Print.
Seshadri, S., and Aradhika Sharma. Astronaut Sunita Williams: Achiever Extraordinaire New Delhi: Rupa, 2007. Print.
Whiting, Melanie, ed. "Sunita L. Williams (Captain, U.S. Navy, Ret.) NASA Astronaut." NASA, 12 Sept. 2018, www.nasa.gov/astronauts/biographies/sunita-l-williams/biography. Accessed 20 Nov. 2018.