Out of this World: Sunita Williams breaks through more than atmosphere with 194 days in outer space and a 9-hour spacewalk August 11, 2007

ASA is nothing if not newsworthy, and with all the talk of drunk astro- nauts, space station sabotage and steamy romances Ngone awry, you might forget that the agency has actually achieved some milestones. In fact, besides landing on the moon and circling Jupiter, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has made stupen- dous in implementing civil rights legislation in the work- place. And they’ve accomplished All photos courtesy of NASA “Piece of Cake.” Sunita Williams on one of her four space walks during her more those feats in a way that so many than six months away from Earth. other employers - not to mention entire countries - still find about as year in space set a world record, As it turned out, the one tough as- elusive as a trip to Mars. surpassing ’s 188- signment that nearly kept her out As The City Edition was going day stint in 1996. Williams also of contention was a requirement to to press, the launch of the space clocked the longest space walk in cut her long hair before she could shuttle Endeavor on August 8th history for a woman, just under 9 enroll in a military school. hurled two more women, Tracy hours. In all, she spent a total of Williams is the daughter of an Caldwell and , 30 hours adrift in the ether as the Indian immigrant and physician. into the “final frontier”, as Star space station orbited. She grew up in Needham, Mas- Trek’s Captain Kirk used to say. “She worked very hard; she sachusetts, where her Slovenian Not that anyone’s calculating, but did quite a bit of extra research on mother earned a degree in finance the two constituted 29 percent of the weekends,” NASA space-sta- at night while raising Sunita and the team of seven . tion manager Mike Suffredini told two other children. The baby of By contrast, less than 3 percent Robyn Shelton of the Orlando Sen- the family, Williams followed in of the jobs in America’s blue-col- tinel. “She was just fun to watch.” her brother’s steps, attending the lar construction trades are held by No doubt of that. Williams, 41, U.S. Naval Academy, where she women, despite three decades of floated weightless inside the space earned her wings as a Sea Knight litigation. station with an unruly swarm of pilot. She is also a Caldwell and Morgan have thick brown hair that spread in trained sea diver. their work cut out for them if they all directions, gleaming eyes and “’Top Gun’ had recently intend to match the feats of Navy a smile that never quit. One can come out and the life of a jet pilot Commander Sunita Williams, who only wonder how Susan B. An- seemed alluring,” Dean explained spent nearly 200 days hovering thony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in her interviw with the . around the earth in the interna- would have reacted to all this. “But, again, there were only a tional space station before return- “I thought that only really, re- couple of spots available to female ing to Earth in June, compliments ally smart people become astro- jet pilots, and while Williams of the Shuttle Atlantis. nauts,” she told NASA’s Brandi did all right in flight school, she Dean in an article written last year. Williams’ more than half a continued Bob Curbeam and Christer Fuglesang work on station construction during Discovery’s first space walk.

wasn’t ranked high enough to get works the controls of the Space Station her top choice. Which is how she Remote Manipulator System ended up in .” during the Discovery mission “I went, ‘Whoo, I’ve never last December. flown a helicopter before in my Copyright 2007 life,’” Williams said. “But I tried The City Edition of San that out and absolutely loved it. Francisco It’s probably the second best view www.thecityedition.com of the Earth.” Barbara Morgan Tracy Caldwell Williams was deployed to the She was preparing to leave on “I think I’m pretty happy with Middle East during the first Gulf a Navy assignment to Italy when that reaction, because I hope to War and later to South Florida, she got word in 1998 that NASA come across as someone people where she flew relief missions af- wanted to hire her. can just talk to,” Williams said. “I ter Hurricane Andrew, according Finally, she was in. Up until get a big kick out of people when to the Sentinel. In 1993, she was she took off last year and headed they say, ‘I don’t believe you.’” selected for the Naval to the space station, she said most Of course, no one’s saying that School and would eventually stay people accused her of kidding anymore. on to teach. around whenever she listed her “She started to really think occupation as astronaut. Rosemary Regello about spaceflight because she knew that a lot of test pilots did that,” Dina Pandya, Williams’s sister explained to Shelton of the Sentinel. “I started looking at the people who were actually at NASA, and I thought there is no way I can even keep up with any of those people,” Williams said to Dean. “I was struggling to get my master’s, going to school at night, and I was like, ‘I don’t want to do this. This is too painful.’ And I thought, ‘No, they’re not going to take a helicop- ter pilot.’ I thought for sure there was really no way.”