After a distinguished 27-year career, NASA astronaut Sunita "Suni" Williams, an astronaut of Indian origin, has retired from the agency, effective December 27, 2025. Williams's career at NASA included three long-duration missions aboard the International Space Station (ISS) and several human spaceflight records.
Williams, 60, a former Navy captain, spent a total of 608 days in space during her three missions, ranking her second among NASA astronauts for cumulative time in orbit. Notably, she holds the record for the most spacewalk time by a woman, with 62 hours and 6 minutes logged during nine excursions. Overall, she ranks fourth in history for total spacewalk time.
Most recently, Williams was part of the Boeing Crew Flight Test mission, launching in June 2024 with Butch Wilmore aboard Boeing's Starliner spacecraft. The mission, intended to last about a week, was extended to over nine months due to technical issues with the Starliner capsule. Williams and Wilmore joined Expeditions 71 and 72, with Williams serving as the space station commander for the second time. Ultimately, they returned to Earth in March 2025 aboard a SpaceX Crew-9 mission. Wilmore retired from NASA last summer.
Born Sunita Lyn Pandya on September 19, 1965, in Euclid, Ohio, Williams's journey to NASA began with a Bachelor's degree from the United States Naval Academy and a Master's degree from the Florida Institute of Technology. A retired U.S. Navy Captain, she has logged over 4,000 flight hours in more than 40 different types of aircraft. She was deployed on USS Saipan in June 1998 when she was selected by NASA for the astronaut program. Williams retired from the Navy in 2017.
Williams reflected on her career, stating that serving in the Astronaut Office and flying in space was an incredible honor. She credited her colleagues, the International Space Station program, and decades of engineering and science for enabling the next steps of exploration to the Moon and Mars and expressed her anticipation for NASA's continued achievements.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman lauded Williams's leadership aboard the space station, stating it helped shape the future of human spaceflight and commercial operations in low Earth orbit. He acknowledged her work in advancing science and technology and laying the groundwork for Artemis missions to the Moon and future Mars exploration, calling her career an enduring source of inspiration. Isaacman called her “a trailblazer in human spaceflight,” and congratulated her on her well-deserved retirement.
Williams is currently touring India. She recently participated in an interactive session in Delhi titled "Eyes on the Stars, Feet on the Ground" and met with the mother of the late Kalpana Chawla, the first woman of Indian origin to go to space, who tragically died in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003.
Boeing's next Starliner mission will be a cargo mission to the space station. NASA wants to ensure 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.
