Skip to main content

All You Need To Know About 2 Astronauts Onboard Starliner Space Flight

Two veteran NASA astronauts with 500 days of previous spaceflight experience between them are the first crew of Boeing's pxpCST-100 Starliner space capsule, launched to space in a test flight on Wednesday from Florida.

Barry "Butch" Wilmore and Sunita "Suni" Williams are set to test Starliner's manual controls before it docks with the International Space Station (ISS) in orbit on Thursday. Both will be arriving at the ISS for the third time.

Here are more details about the astronauts:

Wilmore, 61, a retired U.S. Navy captain, completed four operational deployments flying fighter jets off the decks of aircraft carriers, including 21 combat missions during the first U.S. Gulf War in the 1990s. He also served as a Navy test pilot and flight instructor before joining the NASA astronaut corps in 2000.

He first flew to the space station as a NASA space shuttle pilot in 2009, and returned to the orbiting laboratory in 2014 - launched aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft with two cosmonauts - for a long-duration mission, including several months as station commander.

To date, Wilmore has logged 178 days in space and four spacewalks.

A Tennessee native who played college football while attending Tennessee Tech University, Wilmore holds advanced degrees in electrical engineering and aviation systems. He is married with two daughters.

Williams, 58, a former Navy helicopter pilot with experience flying more than 30 different rotary aircraft, was deployed as part of a helicopter combat support squadron during the first Gulf War. She later flew in support of Navy disaster relief operations in Florida following Hurricane Andrew.

She returned to the naval test pilot school as a rotary aircraft instructor before being selected for the NASA astronaut program in 1998.

Like Wilmore, Williams first flew to the space station aboard a space shuttle and made a return visit as a Soyuz passenger riding along with two cosmonauts. Both her ISS tours - in 2006-2007 and in 2012 - were long-duration science expeditions.

After two stays aboard the outpost, Williams had set a world record for the most time spent by a woman in orbit outside a spacecraft, logging a total of 50 hours and 40 minutes combined during seven spacewalks. Her record has since been surpassed by fellow astronaut Peggy Whitson.

During her second ISS mission in 2012, Williams became only the second woman designated as commander of the station.

An avid athlete, Williams in 2007 became the first person to complete a marathon in space, competing virtually in the Boston Marathon from orbit on the space station's treadmill to go the distance in four hours and 24 minutes.

Taking the concept to the next level, Williams in 2012 completed the first triathlon in space, again using the treadmill and a stationary bicycle, then performing a mix of weight-lifting and resistance exercises on a fitness machine that approximated swimming in microgravity.

So far, Williams has spent a total of 322 days in space, and now made history again by becoming the first woman to fly on the inaugural crewed mission of a new orbital spacecraft.

Born in Massachusetts, Williams currently resides in Houston with her husband, a federal police officer who also flew helicopters earlier in his career.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)



from NDTV News-World-news https://ift.tt/GpLOnVM

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

UK-Born Italian Teen To Become Catholic Church's First Millennial Saint

A London-born Italian teenager who spent his short life spreading the faith online will become the Catholic Church's first millennial saint, after the Vatican attributed to him a second miracle. Carlo Acutis, who died of leukaemia in 2006 aged 15, was beatified four years ago after the Vatican ruled he had miraculously saved another boy's life. He will now become a saint after Pope Francis approved another miraculous act, an intercession on behalf of a young woman in Florence who suffered severe head trauma in July 2022. Carlo was born in London on May 3, 1991, to Italian parents, and moved with them to Milan as a young boy, where he grew up with a huge interest in computers. "He was considered a computer genius... But what did he do? He didn't use these media to chat and have fun," his mother Antonia Salzano said in an interview with Vatican News at the time of his 2020 beatification. Instead, "his zeal for the Lord" drove him to make a website on ...
Post a Comment
Read more

US Has Agreed To Send More Bombs, Warplanes To Israel: Report

The US in recent days authorized the transfer of billions of dollars worth of bombs and fighter jets to Israel, two sources familiar with the effort said on Friday, even as Washington publicly expresses concerns about an anticipated Israeli military offensive in Rafah. The new arms packages include more than 1,800 MK84 2,000-pound bombs and 500 MK82 500-pound bombs, said the sources, who confirmed a report in the Washington Post. Washington gives $3.8 billion in annual military assistance to Israel, its longtime ally. The package comes as Israel faces strong international criticism over its continued bombing campaign and ground offensive in Gaza and as some members of President Joe Biden's party call for him to cut US military aid. The United States has been rushing air defenses and munitions to Israel, but some Democrats and Arab American groups have criticized the Biden administration's steadfast support of Israel, which they say provides it with a sense of impunity. Bid...
Post a Comment
Read more

UK In 'Diplomatic Contact' With Syrian Rebels After Bashar Al-Assad's Ouster

Britain's foreign minister said Sunday that London had established diplomatic contact with the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) rebel group in Syria, which led the offensive that ousted Bashar al-Assad. They remain "a proscribed terrorist organisation, but we can have diplomatic contact and so we do have diplomatic contact, as you would expect", said Foreign Secretary David Lammy. "We want to see a representative government, an inclusive government. We want to see chemical weapons stockpiles secured, and not used, and we want to ensure that there is not continuing violence," he added. "So, for all of those reasons, using all the channels that we have available, and those are diplomatic and of course intelligence-led channels, we seek to deal with HTS where we have to." (Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.) from NDTV News-World-news https://ift.tt/ybLIfjx
Post a Comment
Read more