Sunita Williams
- ISS Expedition 32
- ISS Expedition 33
Sunita " Suni " Williams ( born September 19, 1965 as Sunita Pandya in Euclid, Ohio, USA) is an American astronaut. She holds 194 days and 18 hours the current record for long-term stays in space for women.
Training
Williams was born in the small town located right on Lake Erie Euclid, but grew up with her siblings and parents in the village of Needham in Massachusetts situated on the east. Her father is a doctor ( now retired ), originated in India and migrated in the early 1960s in the U.S.. Her mother is a born U.S. citizen with Slovenian roots.
Williams went to high school in Needham, graduated from this in 1983 and then began a study. She attended the United States Naval Academy ( USNA ) in Maryland and received in May 1987 an undergraduate degree in physics.
With completion of Needham High School, Williams had bound for the United States Navy and commenced active duty after their USNA - time. First, they were trained to Marinetaucherin half a year and then came to Florida. There, she received 18 months of flight instruction before she completed an advanced course for helicopter pilot. Actually, she had wanted to fly jets, but the Navy could not provide enough places for women. That's why Williams had to resort to the rotorcraft.
Subsequently, Williams was transferred to Virginia for 8 helicopter squadron, which has its home base at Naval Air Station Norfolk. With the "Dragon Whales " of how to call the soldiers of the unit, they undertook operations in Central and in the Red Sea, and finally in the Persian Gulf. From there, they supported by the provider "USS Sylvania " with helicopters of the type CH -46 Sea Knight "Operation Desert Shield ". After that, she was involved in the humanitarian U.S. action " Operation Provide Comfort" until June 1992, which was established in April 1991 to help Kurdish refugees. And in September 1992, she commanded a CH -46 unit, as the " USS Sylvania " was ordered off the coast of Miami to help the victims of Hurricane Andrew, who had recently devastated Florida.
For Williams followed a year-long training for test pilot at the United States Naval Test Pilot School ( USNTPS ) in Patuxent River ( Maryland). Subsequently, she worked from December 1993 in Navy testing department helicopter, which also is located on the Naval Air Station Patuxent River.
In addition to her work as a military test pilot and safety officer Williams took on a further study. The Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne in 1995 she was awarded a master's degree in industrial engineering. Prior to leading the entire flight arrangements on the "USS Saipan ," she was an instructor for aspiring helicopter pilots at the USNTPS.
Astronauts activity
Influenced by her father, Dr. Deepak Pandya, and the fact that she grew up with animals, Williams wanted to be a vet in their childhood. Over time, their career aspirations changed toward teacher. The job description of the space traveler only came to when she graduated in 1993 the test pilot course at the USNTPS. One day, the class, the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston attended (Texas), and the aerospace legend John Young held a lesson. That was the trigger to apply at NASA for them. Your first request for the 15th was rejected, on the second attempt it was finally accepted.
Williams was presented by NASA as one of the 17 Mission Specialists in June 1998. From a total of 2618 candidates who met the formal selection criteria, 101 finalists had emerged. They were invited in autumn 1997 to the JSC to tests, interviews and medical examinations.
In the fall of 2000, Williams and the others had "Penguins" ( so designated, the trainees of the 17th astronaut group itself) completed the two-year basic training. Right after NASA sent Williams for a year to Russia to supervise the preparations and the flight of the first long-term crew to the International Space Station (ISS) on " Star City ".
After her return from Moscow, she learned in Canada initially dealing with the ISS robotic arm, adopted in May 2002 a half -week underwater space simulation off the Florida coast in part, until they received half a year later their first concrete job as an astronaut: short time she trained as a flight engineer in the reserve crew for the flight of ISS Expedition 10 together with her namesake Jeff Williams and the Russian Konstantin Kosejew. With the changeover of the crews after the Columbia crash the crew was disbanded in the spring of 2003.
In early May 2006, NASA announced that Williams will be working from the end of the year for about six months as a flight engineer on the ISS. In December 2006 she launched with the shuttle flight STS -116, solved there the German Thomas Reiter from and amplified first, the ISS Increment crew Expedition 14 (Michael López- Alegría and Mikhail Tyurin ), who arrived three months earlier at the station. In April 2007, López- Alegría and Tyurin gave the station supervision schedule to the Expedition 15 up to their return with STS -117 on 22 June 2007 Williams worked with Fyodor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kotov.
During her first space flight, Williams made several records on: With 194 days and 18 hours it was longer than any other woman during a flight in space. The previous record had her colleague Shannon Lucid placed Eleven years earlier, when in 1996 on the Russian space station Mir worked 188 days. It also holds the records for the greatest number of spacewalks a woman (seven) and more than 50 hours, the longest total time that a woman was staying outside of a spacecraft.
Williams was divided into the backup crew for the ISS Expeditions 30 and 31 and then served as a flight engineer of the ISS Expedition 32 The start of the Soyuz TMA- 05M on 15 June 2012, the transition to the ISS on July 17. During the expedition, it was from 33 September until November 2012 Commander of the ISS.
Private
The astronaut is married to Michael Williams. Both had met at the USNA, as they studied physics. Currently, they perform a remote marriage, because while Sunita Williams lives in Houston, her husband works as a police officer in Oregon. The couple has no children, but Williams has in her official biography indicates that she keeps several dogs - Jack Russell Terrier and Labrador Retriever.
Williams maintained his ties with Slovenia. Most recently, she visited this country for a week in May 2013, where he gave lectures. Among other things, they also visited the new Cultural Centre for European space technology KSEVT in Vitanje.