Veteran NASA astronaut Sunita “Suni” Williams, who spent an unexpected nine months aboard the International Space Station (ISS) following technical problems with an experimental spacecraft, has retired after a distinguished 27-year career, NASA announced on Tuesday.
Williams officially retired on December 27, according to a NASA statement. A former U.S. Navy pilot, she joined the space agency in 1998 and went on to become one of its most accomplished astronauts.
“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.
Over her career, Williams flew on three missions to the ISS. Her first mission took place in 2006, when she traveled aboard the space shuttle Discovery. However, her most notable mission occurred in 2024, when a planned one-week stay in orbit was extended to nearly nine months.
Williams and fellow astronaut Butch Wilmore launched to the space station on June 5, 2024, aboard Boeing’s Starliner capsule on its first crewed test flight. During the docking process, engineers identified problems with the spacecraft’s thrusters. In September, NASA decided it was too risky to bring the astronauts home aboard the capsule and returned Starliner to Earth without a crew.
As a result, Williams and Wilmore remained aboard the ISS for 286 days. A SpaceX Dragon capsule was later dispatched to return them to Earth, along with two other astronauts completing a separate six-month mission. The Dragon spacecraft departed the ISS on March 18, 2025, splashing down safely off the coast of Florida.
In total, Williams logged 608 days in space, the second-longest cumulative time in orbit by any NASA astronaut. She also holds the record for the most spacewalk time by a female astronaut, with 62 hours and six minutes, ranking fourth overall among all NASA astronauts.
Despite the unexpected extension, Williams and Wilmore said they adapted well to the prolonged mission.
“The plan went way off from what we expected, but in human spaceflight, we prepare for contingencies,” Wilmore said after returning to Earth. “This is a curvy road—you never know where it’s going to go.”
Williams credited her previous missions for helping her body adjust to the longer stay in space and the recovery process back on Earth.
“Though it was longer than any flight either one of us had flown before, I think my body remembered,” she said in a June interview with NBC News.
Reflecting on her career, Williams described her service at NASA as an “incredible honor.”
“Anyone who knows me knows that space is my absolute favorite place to be,” she said.
