Veteran space shuttle, International Space Station and Soyuz astronaut Suni Williams is one of four astronauts training for flights aboard Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner and SpaceX’s Crew Dragon for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. Noting the start of Women’s History Month today, Williams set the records for most spacewalks by a woman and most time spacewalking by a woman in 2012 during Expedition 32 on the space station.
“We have the opportunity as the commercial crew cadre to go to both Boeing and SpaceX and check out what they’re doing and how they’re coming along with their spacecraft. These are things that are much different from both space shuttle and Soyuz, because they’re taking advantage of the technology from the last two decades or so. Some of the ideas are brand new, it makes us think out of the box from how we’ve done spacecraft and how we’ve flown spacecraft before,” Williams said. Read more from Suni about Commercial Crew, conducting research in orbit and what new astronauts should expect here.