On 5th June 2024, Sunita Williams and her colleague Barry Wilmore left Cape Canaveral Space Force Station aboard the Boeing Crew Flight Test; on the spacecraft’s first journey with astronauts. The spacecraft was due to dock at the International Space Station (ISS), that orbits the Earth and return after 9 days. Due to technical issues, the craft was sent back to Earth unmanned. The team were stranded on the ISS for 9 months but returned in March 2025 on another spaceship. By January 2025, Sunita Williams had made 9 spacewalks with a cumulative total of 62 hours. This is the most time any female has spent doing spacewalks and ranks fourth overall.
A retired Navy officer, Sunita began her astronaut career in 1998 and made her first trip to the ISS in 2006. Born in Ohio (USA) in 1965, Sunita is the daughter of a Slovene American mother, and her father hails from Mehsana in Gujarat. Sunita has celebrated both her Indian and Slovenian heritage by taking a samosa and Slovenia’s flag. A practising Hindu, Sunita has publicly spoken about the importance of her Dharma and, on several trips taken a copy of the Bhagavat Gita, the Upanishad, Om Symbol and a murthi of Ganesh to her trips into space.