Needham native trains for 3rd space mission
Nine astronauts, including an experienced space veteran from Needham, have been tapped to help shepherd in a new phase of the nation’s space program, and will be the first to staff flights and missions in a new crop of commercially made spacecraft.
“I’m thinking about all the people that I’ve met for the last couple of years that have been putting this spacecraft together, as well as the team at the launchpad who have been getting the launchpad and the emergency egress system ready and all the landing tests,” said Sunita Williams, a Needham native and NASA astronaut, in a video interview posted by NASA last week. “(I’m) going, ‘Wow, I hope I’m going to make you proud.’”
Williams and eight others were announced as the crew for the first flights in two spacecraft made by Boeing and SpaceX last week.
Williams was selected as an astronaut in 1998 and has spent 322 days in space over the course of two missions, including one in which she was the commander of the International Space Station.
The new commercial capsules will replace NASA’s space shuttle program, which last flew in 2011. Williams will be in the second crew in the Boeing Starliner, which will take them to the ISS. The first flight will be a test flight.
Williams is a U.S. Navy captain and is the namesake of the Sunita L. Williams Elementary School in Needham, which is expected to open next year.
By handing off crew and cargo runs to the space station to private companies, NASA has set its sight on the moon and Mars, developing the Orion capsule and the massive Space Launch System rocket.
“This is truly an exciting time for human spaceflight in our nation, and believe me, it’s only going to get better as we charge off into the future,” said Bob Cabana, a former shuttle commander who now heads Kennedy Space Center.