Woman Time-in-Space Endurance Record Broken by Sunita Williams

Sunita Williams is now officially holding the record for the longest duration spaceflight for a woman. This morning, she broke the old record, held by Shannon Lucid and established 11 years ago, of 188 days and 4 hours.

Sunita Lyn "Suni" Williams was assigned to the International Space Station as a member of Expedition 14 and then joined Expedition 15, and she launched with the crew of STS-116 in December 2006. She is expected to come back to Earth aboard the Atlantis space shuttle, that was detached from the ISS yesterday and is getting ready for the trip back.

This not Williams' only achievement; she is also the record-holder for most hours outside a spacecraft by a female by completing four spacewalks during Expedition 14 with a total time of 29 hours, 17 minutes.

"It was very exciting to watch her spacewalks and to watch her accumulate more spacewalk time than any other female in the universe," said Lucid, who set the previous female space duration record while flying aboard the Russian Mir Space Station. "These [long-term] flights are providing the needed confidence so that some day in the near future we can depart low-Earth orbit and head on out to Mars."

On April 16, 2007, she ran the first marathon by an astronaut in orbit. Williams finished the Boston Marathon in four hours and 24 minutes. The other crew members reportedly cheered her on and gave her oranges during the race. Williams' sister, Dina Pandya, and fellow astronaut Karen L. Nyberg ran the marathon on Earth, and Williams received updates on their progress from Mission Control.

"Her mission has been critically important to our overall space program," said NASA Astronaut Eileen Collins, another female pioneer in spaceflight. "She truly is a space marathoner who shows young women everywhere that there's a place in the space program for them."