Suni Williams, Starliner astronaut, retires after 27 years at Nasa | Nasa
Suni Williams, one of two NASA astronauts whose 10-day test flight mission turned into a nine-month odyssey on the International Space Station (ISS), has retired from the US space agency.
The 60-year-old former navy captain left in December after 27 years of service to NASA, according to an agency statement released Tuesday. Jared Isaacman, the agency’s new administrator, hailed her as “a pioneer of human spaceflight.”
She retires holding the record for the most accumulated spacewalk time by a woman – more than 62 hours during nine separate operations. But she will be best remembered for the ill-fated first crewed flight of Boeing’s new Starliner capsule in June 2024, when Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore embarked on what should have been a short test mission to the ISS, but ended up staying there for 286 days after technical problems with the spacecraft.
Their extended stay caused a political storm on Earth, with Donald Trump and Elon Musk, the head of SpaceX, insisting the two men were “stranded” in space, having been “abandoned” by the Biden administration. They returned home last March aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule, an uneventful mission touted by Trump as “a rescue” by Musk, his then-friend and ally.
Williams and Wilmore, who retired last summer, were reluctant to wade into the politics of their extended fling, denying in a post-landing news conference that they ever felt abandoned or abandoned.
Wilmore admitted that “in some ways maybe we were stuck,” while Williams chose a more diplomatic route. “We were really focused on what we were doing and trying to be part of the team. Of course we heard some things…” she said.
In total, Williams has launched into space three times, in December 2006 aboard the American space shuttle Discovery; in July 2012 on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft; and the Starliner mission in 2024.
Her combined 608 days in space are the second most of any NASA astronaut, behind Peggy Whitson’s 695. She was also the first astronaut to run a marathon in orbit, pounding a treadmill in April 2007 as an official participant in the Boston Marathon running simultaneously 250 miles below.
“During Suni’s impressive career, she has been a pioneering leader,” Vanessa Wyche, director of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, said in the NASA statement. “His exceptional dedication to the mission will inspire future generations of explorers.” »
In many ways, Williams’ retirement, announced Tuesday on the 96th birthday of Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the Moon, marks a generational passing of the torch. It came three days after NASA moved Artemis II, the rocket expected to take humans around the Moon this year for the first time since 1972, to its launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Isaacman noted the transition in his own tribute to Williams. “His work to advance science and technology laid the foundation for the Artemis missions to the Moon and Mars, and his extraordinary achievements will continue to inspire generations to dream big and push the boundaries of what is possible,” he said.
The Artemis launch window will open on February 6. It will carry a crew of four, NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as Canadian Jeremy Hansen. NASA will soon conduct a “wet test” dress rehearsal to assess the rocket’s readiness.
According to the space agency, more than 2.5 million people have requested their own “boarding pass” for the flight, an educational initiative in which names will be stored digitally on an SD card that will fly around the moon aboard Orion, the Artemis crew capsule.
A successful 10-day mission will advance plans for Artemis III and the first human moon landing in more than half a century, currently planned for next year.
Williams said the ISS and its “impressive people, engineers and scientists” had paved the way for new exploration of the Moon and Mars.
