Astronaut Sunita Williams undertakes a spacewalk after 12 years
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NASA astronaut Sunita Williams, of Indian origin, returned to spacewalking on Thursday after a 12-year hiatus, teaming up with colleague Nick Hague for a maintenance mission outside the International Space Station (ISS).
This marked her eighth career spacewalk and Hague’s fourth.
Designated as US Spacewalk 91, the mission is expected to span six and a half hours. Hague, serving as Spacewalk Crew Member 1, wore a suit with red stripes, while Williams, as Crew Member 2, donned an unmarked suit.
The astronauts worked on multiple tasks, including upgrades to the station's Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) X-ray telescope. They replaced a rate gyro assembly used for orientation control, installed protective patches on NICER’s light filters, and upgraded a reflector device critical for docking operations. Additionally, they prepared tools for future maintenance on the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer.
NASA has scheduled a second spacewalk for January 23. During this mission, Williams and astronaut Barry Wilmore will remove a radio frequency antenna from the station's truss and collect surface samples from the Destiny laboratory and Quest airlock to analyse potential microorganism presence. They will also prepare a spare elbow joint for the Canadarm2 robotic arm.
Originally an eight-day mission aboard the ISS, Williams and Wilmore have spent 10 months in space due to delays with the SpaceX Crew 10 mission. The faulty Boeing Starliner, which first transported them, was declared unfit for human travel after its return to Earth.
NASA plans to bring the astronauts back in a SpaceX Dragon capsule, rescheduled for March 2025, to ensure additional safety preparations.
Reflecting on the extended mission, Williams said, "We want to go home because we left our families a while ago, but there’s still much work to be done up here."