Veteran NASA astronaut Suni Williams, one of two crew members recently stranded for months aboard the International Space Station, has retired.
The US space agency confirmed the news on Tuesday, stating her retirement became effective at the end of December. Her crewmate from Boeing’s troubled capsule test flight, Butch Wilmore, also departed NASA last summer.
The pair launched to the space station in 2024, the first people to fly Boeing’s new Starliner crew capsule.
Their mission should have lasted just a week, but stretched to more than nine months because of Starliner trouble. In the end, they caught a ride home last March with SpaceX.
Boeing’s next Starliner mission will carry cargo — not people — to the space station. NASA wants to make sure all of the capsule’s thruster and other issues are solved before putting anyone on board. The trial run will take place later this year.
Williams, 60, a former Navy captain, spent more than 27 years at NASA, logging 608 days in space over three station missions. She also set a record for the most spacewalking time by a woman: 62 hours during nine excursions.
NASA’s new administrator Jared Isaacman called her “a trailblazer in human spaceflight.”
“Congratulations on your well-deserved retirement,” he added in a statement.
Talking in April Nasa astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore said they felt “nowhere near” stranded despite being forced to spend nine months on the international space station.
Speaking to reporters for the first time since their return home, Mr Wilmore told Fox News that while “in certain respects” they were “stuck”, they weren’t “abandoned” in space.
“Based on how they were couching this? That we were left and forgotten and all? We were nowhere near any of that,” he said.
Speaking at a news conference, the astronauts reflected on their extended stay at the orbiting laboratory and expressed “respect and trust” for president Donald Trump and Elon Musk, whose SpaceX company sent the craft that brought them back.
