FILE - From left, NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore, Russia's Alexander Gorbunov, and NASA astronauts Nick Hague and Suni Williams sit inside a SpaceX capsule onboard the SpaceX recovery ship Megan after landing in the water off the coast of Florida, March 18, 2025. (Keegan Barber/NASA via AP, File)
FILE - Astronaut Suni Williams is interviewed at Johnson Space Center on March 31, 2025, in Houston. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis, File)
AL
FILE - From left, NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore, Russia's Alexander Gorbunov, and NASA astronauts Nick Hague and Suni Williams sit inside a SpaceX capsule onboard the SpaceX recovery ship Megan after landing in the water off the coast of Florida, March 18, 2025. (Keegan Barber/NASA via AP, File)
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA’s Suni Williams — one of two astronauts stuck for months at the International Space Station — has retired.
The space agency announced the news Tuesday, saying her retirement took effect at the end of December.
Williams' crewmate on Boeing’s ill-fated capsule test flight, , left NASA last summer.
The pair launched to the space station in 2024, the first people to fly Boeing’s new Starliner crew capsule. Their mission should have lasted just a week, but stretched to more than nine months because of Starliner trouble. In the end, they caught a ride home last March with SpaceX.
will carry cargo — not people — to the space station. NASA wants to make sure all of the capsule's thruster and other issues are solved before putting anyone on board. The trial run will take place later this year.
Williams, 60, a former Navy captain, spent more than 27 years at NASA, logging 608 days in space over three station missions. She also set a record for the : 62 hours during nine excursions.
NASA's new administrator Jared Isaacman called her “a trailblazer in human spaceflight.”
"Congratulations on your well-deserved retirement," he added in a statement.
___
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
