Williams has spent 322 days in space on 2 shuttle missions.
AB Wire
NEW YORK: Indian American astronaut Sunita Williams has been selected amongst the first group of four astronauts to fly the next generation of commercial crew vehicles, NASA announced, last week.
Williams, who spent 322 days in space on two shuttle missions, joins Eric Boe, Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley as what NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden called “space pioneers.”
“I am pleased to announce four American space pioneers have been selected to be the first astronauts to train to fly to space on commercial crew vehicles, all part of our ambitious plan to return space launches to U.S. soil, create good-paying American jobs and advance our goal of sending humans farther into the solar system than ever before,” Bolden said in a press release.
“These distinguished, veteran astronauts are blazing a new trail, a trail that will one day land them in the history books and Americans on the surface of Mars,” Bolden said in a blog post announcing the astronaut selection.
A successor to the 30-year-long space shuttle program, the commercial crew program seeks to send astronauts to deep space by the 2030s on privately built spacecraft. Flight testing, which will involve the four astronauts announced this week, is scheduled to start in 2017.
Williams, a U.S. Navy captain, was born in Euclid, Ohio, but considers Needham, Massachusetts, her hometown. She received her commission in the Navy in May 1987 and became a helicopter pilot, logging more than 3,000 flight hours in more than 30 different aircraft. NASA chose Williams for the astronaut program in 1998.
In addition to her nearly year-long stint in space over two missions, Williams currently holds the record for total cumulative spacewalk time by a female astronaut (50 hours and 40 minutes).
Preceding her selection into the astronaut program, Williams earned her advanced degree in engineering management at Florida Tech’s Patuxent site in Maryland in 1995. She told the university’s Florida Tech Today magazine in an earlier interview that the extended studies program was an ideal fit, reported the university.
“It’s a perfect place because they are working and testing aircraft and this automatically can become part of their studies or their thesis. It goes hand-in-hand. There is an audience who needs this service,” she told the magazine.
According to NASA, the four astronauts will work closely with company-led teams to understand their designs and operations as they finalize their Boeing CST-100 and SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft and operational strategies.
“Their selection allows NASA to move forward with the training necessary to deliver on President Barack Obama’s ambitious plan for returning the launch of the US astronauts to US soil,” said John Holdren, assistant to the President for science and technology.
In a dramatic departure, NASA last year awarded contracts to Boeing and SpaceX to ferry astronauts to the space station, the orbital laboratory about 250 miles above the Earth’s surface. By outsourcing the missions to low-Earth orbit, NASA says it can then focus on its main goal: flying to deep space, even Mars, reported The Washington Post.
Since the shuttle’s retirement, the U.S. has been forced to rely on Russia to take its astronauts to the station, an expensive and troubling arrangement that now costs $76 million per seat.
By relying on contractors, the U.S. will save nearly $20 million per flight, Bolden said, and allow more astronauts to fly at a time.
The first flight, expected to occur near the end of 2017, had been pushed back from this year because of funding delays. But now even the revised timeline is in jeopardy, some fear, after Congress has slashed $300 million from the program, according to the Post.