NASA astronaut who was stuck in space retires after 27-year career

NASA’s Suni Williams — a record-setting astronaut who endured a months-long, unplanned enactment aboard the International Space Station during Boeing's Starliner debacle — has retired aft 27 years of service.

NASA announced connected Tuesday that Williams' status took effect astatine the extremity of December. Her crewmate connected Boeing's troubled Starliner trial flight, Butch Wilmore, near NASA past summer.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman described Williams arsenic a "trailblazer successful quality spaceflight."

"Her enactment advancing subject and exertion has laid the instauration for Artemis missions to the Moon and advancing toward Mars, and her extraordinary achievements volition proceed to animate generations to imagination large and propulsion the boundaries of what’s possible," helium said.

RESCUED NASA ASTRONAUTS BUTCH WILMORE, SUNI WILLIAMS GIVE FIRST INTERVIEW SINCE RETURN TO EARTH IN FOX NEWS EXCLUSIVE

NASA astronaut Suni Williams is pictured during an interrogation astatine Johnson Space Center connected March 31, 2025, successful Houston. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis, File)

Williams thanked her colleagues for their enactment passim her "amazing" 27-year vocation with NASA.

"Anyone who knows maine knows that abstraction is my implicit favourite spot to be," Williams said successful a statement.

"The International Space Station, the people, the engineering, and the subject are genuinely awe-inspiring and person made the adjacent steps of exploration to the Moon and Mars possible," she added. "I anticipation the instauration we acceptable has made these bold steps a small easier."

Williams and Wilmore spent implicit 280 days successful abstraction aft their eight-day mission, which began successful June 2024, was derailed erstwhile their Boeing Starliner spacecraft encountered method issues. NASA decided it was unsafe to nonstop the astronauts backmost connected the spacecraft, and it returned to Earth unmanned successful September 2024.

NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams airs connected June 13, 2024, wrong the vestibule betwixt the guardant larboard connected the International Space Station’s Harmony module and Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. (NASA)

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A rescue mission, conducted by NASA and SpaceX, helped bring the astronauts location connected March 18, 2025.

In the astronauts' archetypal interrogation aft returning home, Williams told Fox News that she was gladsome to spot President Donald Trump and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk "involved" and "taking notice" of their predicament.

NASA astronaut Suni Williams gestures astatine NASA's Kennedy Space Center, connected the time of Boeing's Starliner-1 Crew Flight Test ngo connected a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket to the International Space Station, successful Cape Canaveral, Florida, connected June 1, 2024. (Reuters/Joe Skipper)

"[It allows them to] recognize that our engagement arsenic a country, arsenic a spacefaring nation, is truly important passim the world. It sets an example, and it shows our quality to beryllium capable to bash the hard things, enactment radical successful space, run successful space, enactment successful space, and past bring america back. It's important, and I admit that," she said.

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Williams, a autochthonal of Needham, Massachusetts, is besides a retired U.S. Navy skipper and accomplished chopper and fixed-wing pilot, having logged much than 4,000 formation hours successful 40 antithetic aircraft.

She holds a bachelor’s grade successful carnal subject from the United States Naval Academy and a master’s grade successful engineering absorption from Florida Institute of Technology.