Knowledge without frontiers Knowledge Without Frontiers | Page 84

Sunita Williams in a spacesuit. NASA.
1965
EUCLID
NEEDHAM
ANNAPOLIS
SPACE WALKER
HOUSTON
MELBOURN
Born in Euclid, Ohio, on 19 September 1965 to
an ethnic Indian father and a mother descended
from Slovenian immigrants, Sunita L. Williams
grew up in Massachusetts and attended the
Naval Academy in Annapolis, where she grad-
uated in physics. She trained to be a helicopter
pilot and became a test pilot for different types
of aircraft. In 1995 she completed a master’s de-
gree in engineering management at the Florida
Institute of Technology. After visiting the space
centre in Houston and meeting with astronauts,
she decided to pursue a career in space explora-
tion. She was selected for astronaut training by
NASA from among several thousand applicants
and became a part of their astronaut team.
84
Pilot, officer, and prominent
astronaut with several Interna-
tional Space Station records to
her name. She is one of the few
people to have been in space
more than once.