NASA astronaut Suni Williams spent over 62 hours outside ISS during career spacewalks

Few people alive can describe the feeling of floating in the black blanket of space and seeing the winking light of Earth thousands of miles below. 

But over the course of her career, NASA astronaut Sunita “Suni” Williams has spent a total of 62 hours and 6 minutes attached to the side of the International Space Station (ISS), hovering in the inky sky for ages to complete exterior repairs to the spacecraft. 

The decorated engineer completed her first spacewalk in 2006, and since then she’s collected two Guinness World Records titles for most accumulated time on spacewalks by a female and oldest person to perform a spacewalk (female) for her out-of-this-world work.

Born in Euclid, Ohio in 1965, Suni is the daughter of an Indian-American neuroanatomist and a Slovene-American mother, who moved to Needham, Massachusetts when she was a child. The youngest of three siblings, Sunita graduated from high school in 1983 and received a BS from the United States Naval Academy, before obtaining an MS in 1995 for engineering management from the Florida Institute of Technology.

In 1987, Sunita was commissioned an ensign by the US Navy, and her flight career began to take off – she first completed aviation training, and then combat helicopter training, before flying in helicopter support squadrons preparing for the Persian Gulf War and the establishment of no-fly zones over Kurdish areas of Iraq, in addition to relief missions in 1992 during Hurricane Andrew in Miami.

Midway through the 1990s, Suni became a naval test pilot and a test pilot instructor, testing over 30 different types of aircraft and logging over 2,770 hours of flight time. When NASA was ready to pick new engineers and pilots to take to space, she was a natural choice, and she was selected for their astronaut programme in 1998 and was stationed aboard the USS Saipan.

As one might expect, astronaut training is incredibly difficult – and Suni had to travel to Moscow to get training in ISS procedures and robotics with the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roskosmos). Like many astronauts, Suni worked with people from a variety of different backgrounds over the course of her career, as scientists worldwide attempt to understand the intricacies of space.

Her first trip to the stars occurred on 9 December 2006, when she flew aboard the shuttle Discovery to the ISS on mission STS-116 to serve as a flight engineer for Expeditions 14 and 15. With her takeoff, she made her father’s home country of India proud, as she became the second Indian-American astronaut to go to space – after the tragic and fatal accident of Kalpana Chawla in the Columbia disaster.

While aboard the ISS, Suni made four spacewalks (totaling more than 29 hours outside the spacecraft) to observe and repair the exterior of the structure. She spent a total of 195 days in flight, setting her first records for women in spacewalks and duration of time in flight – the latter of which was later broken by Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti. 

An avid athlete, Suni spent her free time on the ISS preparing and participating in the Boston Marathon on her treadmill – strapped in by her waist to counteract the effects of gravity, she ran the 42.2 km (26.2 miles) to the finish line, whilst floating above the competition 250 miles away.

She was the first to complete this incredible milestone, and to date, Suni and British astronaut Tim Peake are the only ones to ever run a marathon in space!

Suni’s second trip to space occurred a little over five years later, as part of the crew of Soyuz TMA-05M. They took off on 15 July 2012, and she served as a flight engineer on Expedition 32 and was later promoted to commander of Expedition 33 in September of that year. 

While onboard, she made three more spacewalks totalling 21 more hours, bringing her record up to a total of 50 over the two flights. By the time she returned home on 11 November, she had spent another 127 days in space, for a combined time of 321 days.

And of course, the astronaut had to up-her-athletic-ante on her second trip, completing a triathlon onboard! 

Those competitions are hard enough on Earth, but by using a treadmill, stationary bike, and a weightlifting machine to simulate the swimming, Suni somehow counteracted gravity to prove some people just have brains AND brawn.

It was on Suni’s latest flight, however, that the incredible astronaut truly received international fame. 

In 2015, she was selected as one of four people to complete the first test flights in NASA’s Commercial Crew programme. NASA would be sending two new privately-crewed spacecraft to the ISS – SpaceX’s Crew Dragon and Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner – and in 2022 Suni was chosen to pilot the Starliner alongside commander Barry “Butch” Wilmore. The pair took off on 5 June 2024 for what was supposed to be an eight-day trip. 

But during the initial flight, five thrusters failed and helium leaks were detected in the propulsion system. Out of an abundance of caution, Suni and Butch joined the ISS crew, and would wait until it was determined the spacecraft could reenter Earth safely. 

That wait took nine months.

By August, NASA decided the next mission to the ISS (via SpaceX) would occur the following month with only two crewmembers instead of the usual four, in the hopes that Suni and Butch could join them and return to Earth on their Dragon spacecraft in February 2025. 

While waiting, on 30 January Suni and Butch conducted a 5 hour and 26 minute long spacewalk to remove some redundant radio equipment and carry out microbial analysis of various vents around the station's life-support systems. Since Suni was 59 years 133 days old when she left the Quest airlock, she officially took the title for oldest person to perform a spacewalk (female) – securing the record before she even touched back on Earth.

She described the view from outside the ISS as “incredible”, saying she could see the Himalayas and India’s Mumbai-Gujarat coastline with its “network of lights.”

And finally, after further delays, Suni and Barry splashed down in Florida on 18 March in the Dragon spacecraft – just under 10 months after arriving in space. Their Starliner had returned home unmanned in September.

This 286-day stay on the ISS brought her total time in space to 608 days – the second most of any NASA astronaut after Peggy Whitson, who spent 675 days in the stars.

“First and foremost, we were always coming back,” she said in a press conference, shortly after returning to Earth. “Part of that was resilience, and being able to take a turn that was unexpected, and make the best of that.”

She informed younger people in the audience that these unpredictable changes are part of life, and her mission was both a metaphor and a testament to the power of powering through – even when life doesn’t go in a straight path. 

And despite not knowing how popular they were while in space – she said she was “honoured and humbled” to know their adventures captured public attention.

After touching down, Suni spent 45 days in a rehabilitation program to get used to Earthly life. But what she never forgot were the comforts of home – her first meal after landing back in America? A grilled cheese.

And despite all the complications, Suni said “I’d go back in a heartbeat” – she’s proud of all the support from her team and the world, and thinks “I love being in space. Space is great. I joke around that it’s a little vacation from Earth, but honestly, we have great people in our office who have been training and are ready to go.”

So congratulations to Suni for all of your out-of-this-world records – you’re Officially Amazing!

Header image: Alamy