Sunita Williams set for third space flight: All you need to know about the mission

“We are all here because we are all ready. Our friends and family have heard about it and we’ve talked about it and they are happy and proud that we are part of the process to fix it all,” the BBC quoted Williams as saying

About the mission

Calling the launch an “absolutely critical milestone”, NASA associate administrator Jim Free told reporters in a pre-launch news conference said the lives of the astronauts are at stake.

Following two unmanned orbital flight tests — Boe-OFT and Boe-OFT 2 in 2019 and 2022 respectively — this will be the Boeing Starliner’s first crewed trip and its third orbital flight test overall. The CST-100 Starliner test mission comes after years of delay and more than $1 billion in cost overruns.

Due to several technical and software problems, a 2019 attempt to launch an unmanned Starliner to the ISS for a week was unsuccessful and returned to Earth several days early.

If successful, the spacecraft will be authorised to fly routine space missions as part of the space agency’s commercial crew programme. The gumdrop-shaped Starliner pod, which can accommodate up to seven astronauts will bring Boeing at par with SpaceX, whose Crew Dragon spaceship successfully completed its first human voyage in 2020.

Prior missions undertaken by Williams

Williams received her commission as an Ensign in the United States Navy from the United States Naval Academy in May 1987.

Williams was selected as an astronaut by NASA in 1998 and is a veteran of two space missions, Expeditions 14/15 and 32/33. She served as a flight engineer on Expedition 32 and then commander of Expedition 33.

During her first spaceflight, Expedition 14/15, Williams was launched with the crew of STS-116 on December 9, 2006, docking with the International Space Station on December 11, 2006. While onboard, she established a world record for females with four spacewalks totalling 29 hours and 17 minutes. Astronaut Peggy Whitson subsequently broke the record in 2008 with a total of five spacewalks.

On Expedition 32/33, Williams was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, along with Russian Soyuz commander Yuri Malenchenko and Flight Engineer Akihiko Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, on July 14, 2012. Williams spent four months conducting research and exploration aboard the orbiting laboratory. She landed in Kazakhstan on November 18, 2012, after spending 127 days in space.

During their Expedition, Williams and Hoshide performed three spacewalks to replace a component that relays power from the space station’s solar arrays to its systems and repair an ammonia leak on a station radiator. With 50 hours and 40 minutes, Williams once again held the record for total cumulative spacewalk time by a female astronaut. The record has since been overtaken by Peggy Whitson. Williams has spent a cumulative total of 322 days in space.

Williams was born in Euclid, Ohio, to Indian-American neuroanatomist Deepak Pandya and Slovene-American Ursuline Bonnie (Zalokar) Pandya. She holds a physical science degree from the US Naval Academy and a Master of Science in Engineering Management from Florida Institute of Technology.

With inputs from agencies