NASA astronaut Sunita Williams retires after 27 years—A look at the Indian-American trailblazer's stellar career

NASA's Indian-origin spaceman Sunita Williams, who was recently stranded on and subsequently rescued from the International Space Station (ISS), has retired, the space agency announced late on Tuesday.

Williams' retirement comes after 27 years of service to the space agency, and became effective on 27 December 2025, NASA said. She completed three missions aboard the ISS, and set numerous human spaceflight records throughout her career.

“Suni Williams has been a trailblazer in human spaceflight, shaping the future of exploration through her leadership aboard the space station and paving the way for commercial missions to low Earth orbit,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said, the space agency said in a release.

“Her work advancing science and technology has laid the foundation for Artemis missions to the Moon and advancing toward Mars, and her extraordinary achievements will continue to inspire generations to dream big and push the boundaries of what’s possible," Isaacman added.

Williams was born to Indian-American father Deepak Pandya and Slovenian American mother Ursuline Bonnie Pandya on 19 September 1965, and began training to become an astronaut at the Johnson Space Center in 1998, after a stint with the US Navy, which saw her retire as a Captain.

A few years later, on 9 December 2006, Williams undertook her first trip to the ISS, joining the Expedition 14 crew, and performing her first extra-vehicular activity just eight days into the STS-116 mission.

During her time with the Expedition 14 crew (and later, Expedition 15 after rotation) where she served as a flight engineer, Williams completed a then-record four spacewalks, and the first-ever space marathon, wherein she ran the distance of the Boston Marathon on an ISS treadmill as the space station orbited the Earth.

Williams' second stint at the ISS began in 2012, when she flew to the space station for Expedition 32 and 33, serving as station commander for the latter for the 127-day mission, during which she performed three spacewalks.

The Indian-American astronaut's most recent trip to the ISS came in June 2024, when she, along with Barry ‘Butch’ Wilmore, flew to the ISS on a Starliner spacecraft as part of NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test mission.

Part of Expedition 71/72, Williams' third trip to the ISS also saw her serve as station commander, but the mission lasted considerably longer than expected due to technical issues, which left the Indian-American astronaut and Wilmore stranded in space for over nine months for a mission that was supposed to last a little over a week.

The duo touched down on Earth on 18 March 2025 as part of SpaceX's Crew-9 mission, having travelled 121,347,491 miles, spent 286 days in space, and completed 4,576 orbits around Earth.

Over the course of her career with NASA, Williams logged a whopping 608 days and 19 minutes in space, and is currently second in NASA's list of astronauts with the most cumulative time in space. The first position is occupied by another female astronaut, Peggy Whitson, who retired from the agency in 2018.

In addition to her accomplishments in human spaceflight, Williams also served NASA in various capacities and held other roles in her career.

She was part of the NASA Extreme Environments Mission Operations (NEEMO) crew, and spent nine days living in an underwater habitat. Williams also served as the deputy chief of NASA's Astronaut Office after her first ISS mission, and later became the Director of Operations in Star City, Russia after her second ISS mission.

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