From Earth orbit to the Moon and Mars, explore the world of human spaceflight with NASA each week on the official podcast of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Listen to in-depth conversations with the astronauts, scientists and engineers who make it possible.
On episode 399, NASA astronaut Suni Williams reflects on her record-breaking mission, her perspective after returning to Earth, and her journey as one of the most experienced spacewalkers in history. This episode was recorded August 5, 2025.
Transcript
Dane Turner
Houston We Have a Podcast! Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center, Episode 399: A Record-Breaking Astronaut. I’m Dane Turner, and I will be your host today. On this podcast we bring in the experts: scientists, engineers, and astronauts all to let you know what’s going on in the world of human spaceflight, and more.
NASA Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have returned to Earth! They made history as the first humans to fly aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft during NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test, or CFT. Launched June 5, 2024, aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, the CFT mission was Boeing’s first crewed flight.
NASA and Boeing witnessed issues with the spacecraft thrusters on June 6 as Starliner approached the space station. Engineering teams reviewed a collection of data, conducted a variety of testing, hosted independent reviews with agency propulsion experts, and developed various return contingency plans. The uncertainty in data did not meet the agency’s safety and performance requirements for human spaceflight, so NASA decided to return the Starliner safely to Earth uncrewed and move Butch and Suni to return on the SpaceX Dragon as part of Crew-9. Starliner undocked without the two astronauts and landed at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico on September 7.
Nick Hague and Alexander Gorbunov launched September 28 on the Crew-9 mission with two empty seats to return with Butch and Suni later aboard Dragon. The quartet remained on station until April 2025 as part of the space station’s mission of research and discovery. Butch and Suni conducted more than 150 experiments and logged over 900 hours of research. Suni Williams set the record for the most cumulative spacewalking time by a woman at a whopping 62 hours and 6 minutes.
These NASA astronauts are among the few humans to pilot a human-rated spacecraft for the first time. Much was learned from the flight test that is leading to continued work on the commercial spacecraft.
We talked with Butch and Suni prior to their launch and discussed their background and the mission on episode 332.
Butch and Suni have been very busy after returning, and Butch recently announced his retirement from NASA. But we were lucky enough to catch Suni for an interview to talk about what she’s been up to since their return, and her perspective a few months after their mission.
Let’s set the record with Suni Williams.
Dane Turner
Suni thank you so much for joining us on Houston. We have podcast today. It’s great to have you back on here.
Suni Williams
Yeah, it’s great to be back on Earth, and great to be back with everybody here at Johnson Space Center. So thanks for the invitation.
Dane Turner
So let’s check in with you here. We last talked to you before CFT flew. What have you been doing since you’ve gotten back?
Suni Williams
So it’s been pretty busy. You know, right away, we do a little bit of rehabilitation, physical rehabilitation, with our strength and condition rehab coaches over at the astronaut gym. And we have all sorts of activities that we do just to make sure that, like one, our neuro-vestibular system is activated and back again, our agility is back. Our strength we measure. It really hadn’t lost any, and that, all you know, goes with the bone density as well. So a lot of medical tests associated with that, but that’s about 30 days to 45 days to make sure that we’re we’re released and and then we’re off to other activities. So that that was the bulk of the beginning part of our return, and now we’re talking to a lot of folks and saying thank you for all of the support that they’ve done, and also passing on, you know, lessons learned through from our mission and hoping to incorporate them, incorporate them into the future missions.
Dane Turner
Oh, fantastic. And have you been spending a lot of time with friends and family, too and stuff?
Suni Williams
Absolutely that right after the rehab, actually, we took a little bit of time, and I went up to visit with my family and just hang out a little bit and enjoyed the little bit cooler weather up in New England, where I’m originally from.
Dane Turner
Oh, that’s wonderful. So let’s jump back now little bit more than a year ago, back to June 2024 and we last talked to you about then, and you were getting ready to launch on CFT. There were two scrubs of the launch before it was successful. Can you take us back to the Operations and Checkout Building and the anticipation before launch? What was it like getting ready to actually fly?
Suni Williams
You know, we worked so long with all of the members of our team, the launch team, as well as the mission control team here in Houston, and all of our trainers, all of the support people. So I mean, I felt like we were carrying all that with us as we were going out to launch pad each time. Also, you know, of course, it’s a test mission, so not surprising that we had a couple starts and stops to get us to space so that that was not, like I mentioned, unanticipated. It was sort of like, okay, this is par for the course. And you know what? We learned a bunch of stuff with working with United Launch Alliance, our launch provider. This is first time they put humans into space, and, you know, a couple little figuring out, a couple little things of how they want to have their rocket going through the count. It was, it was really a great experience. Oh, and see, just being in there, getting ready being in quarantine. It was a little bit longer than we had anticipated, just because of the launch scrubs, but it was still a lot of fun. We still had a ability to see friends and family through the glass at different times when we’re out there. There’s a couple of different launches. We all went to SpaceX cargo launches or Starlink launches, and you just got to enjoy Florida and relaxing. It’s been a number of years to get to this point. So for me, quarantine was sort of relaxing. Able to cross the T’s, dot the I’s, and make sure we’re just ready to go.
Dane Turner
So you’d been on the Starliner simulations for years at this point. What was it like launching in the real thing, versus being in the sims?
Suni Williams
Oh, it was really close to the sim. Actually, the sims, though, are a little bit more, I would say, dramatic in one way and not dramatic in another way. So dramatic in the way that we put in malfunctions. And for the launch, for example, we didn’t really have any malfunctions. It was perfect. Right down the middle. Energy was great. The rocket performed awesome. You know, we got into orbit. That was great. First burn and then the next burn. As we were getting all of our stuff together, everything was working swimmingly. So, I would say less dramatic, because our training teams get us ready for all sorts of malfunctions and prepare us for all sorts of contingencies that didn’t happen, I would say, now more dramatic, because it’s the real thing, and you’re actually riding on the rocket, and you’re in the spacecraft, maneuvering it, and, you know, doing the, you know, the things that we need to do to make the spacecraft fly to the right points, and do the test points, as well as the test stuff that we did inside the spacecraft. So a little more, oh, this is real, you know, like, and you can find all the little stumbling blocks while we’re doing that. And there were small stumbling blocks the first day, like, you know, a number of a cartridge was so written so small that we, you know, hey, let’s make it in Sharpie, just, you know, some things that were really pretty benign. Or, you know, we should pack this a little bit differently so it’s easier to find this, you know, just some small things like that. I think our sublimator had a little bit of an issue, so we had to work with that. But that was we’ve trained so hard for that that was not a- nothing to be worried about. So anyway, our first day getting into space was, like I said, dramatic, just because it was real, the noises, the clunks, the, you know, as the as you’re getting, you know, separating the parts of the rocket. But a little less dramatic, because things went as planned.
Dane Turner
Now, you’ve piloted more than 30 different types of aircraft, multiple spacecraft, and you’ve been an instructor at the Naval Test Pilot School. How did all that experience help you with developing and flying Starliner?
Suni Williams
Yeah, it’s a great question, and it’s a really unique skill. There’s a bunch of us in national office that have been to Test Pilot School. I’m not unique in that regard. But I think one of the really cool things about it we, you know, the little joking say, saying that we have is, if you can start it, you can fly it. Because every, every aircraft is a little bit different than just have to know how to get the, you know, get the, you know, the fire triangle going and the and the engines moving. But. After you start it, you know, then you then you fly it, and then you evaluate it for its specific characteristics, what it’s supposed to do. And you can understand whether or not the spacecraft or the aircraft is designed correctly for the task at hand. Like Starliner, for example. You know, we both got our hands on the sticks the first day, and it was with everything working, I would say all the thrusters working, the spacecraft worked perfectly. And Butch and I were so pleasantly surprised, like while we were waiting for something to be a little bit off, and it was just, it was just great. And that was our test pilot background, you know, getting ready to evaluate, taking notes as we were hearing things, learning things, seeing things, and not only, you know, physical notes, but with the camera, taking pictures and taking video. So the team would have that back here as engineering data that we could work into the simulations and and future flights, so that, I think, is part of the test of it. You know, you’re trying, you’re looking, you’re just observing, you’re taking notes, and you’re giving that stuff back, that feedback back, so we could make this program better.
Dane Turner
I think you’ve alluded to this just a little bit in some of your answers here, but there were some issues on the way uphill. Can you describe what those were and how you worked with the teams on the ground to resolve them?
Suni Williams
Yeah. So the second day we on the rendezvous profile, we started losing some thrusters, and it got to, like the culmination, or the bad point when we were on what we call the V bar. So in front of the space station coming in to the space station. At one point in time, we had lost one of our degrees of freedom, six degrees of freedom, pitch, roll, yaw, X, Y and Z, and one of them the positive x, we didn’t have thrusters anymore to control that at one point in time.
Dane Turner
That’s forward movement?
Suni Williams
Forward moment toward the station. So actually, the best axis in general, because it’s just sort of like having the brakes on, because you don’t have a thrusters in that direction, right? So I guess for for all of looking at it, looking at it, that was probably the best combination of thrusters to lose. We didn’t really know exactly why. At the time this was going on, it’s like, wow, something’s happening, you know, like we had had before launch, a helium issue that we were discussing and went with, and so was that part of it, or what’s the problem? And we were just like, again, as a test pilot, writing down, Butch was making sure he has control ability of the of the spacecraft. They had asked us to take manual at one point in time, at a large chunk of time for, I think is over an hour, and to fly in from 260 meters to 200 meters, where we could re engage the automation in that time frame, though it was pretty a little bit nerve wracking, I guess you could say, and Butch would probably say the same, you know, he was, he was flying great, making sure we were dead on. Because at some points in time, they were like, hey, hands off the controls. So we are manually flying this thing at the space station, you know, about, you know about like, 250 meters out from it, so not super close, not super far away, but at a place where orbital mechanics could take over. So you’re hoping you’re going to maintain looking at the space station while they shut down the engine and restarted again to try and reactivate it. And we did this a number of times. You know, flying in, hands off the controls, engine stops, engine starts, one, you know, one of the thrusters. So it was a little bit nerve wracking.
But what was happening at that point in time was a lot of coordination with the ground. I know they were having many conversations on the ground about all of this too, but it was really professional and concise about the plan. Okay, this is what we’re going to do. You’re going to do, you’re going to go manual control. At some point in time, we’re going to tell you hands off. We’ll restart the thruster, and then we can, you can go fly again. And so Butch’s two hands are on the controls, of course. So I’m talking on the radio, and we’re doing, like, hands on, hands off, you know, like this, back and forth. And it was just a little bit of a dance as we were going through, I can’t remember now the number of thrusters that we that we restarted that day, but enough that we got thrusters back with enough capability that the team felt confident that at 200 meters they could, we could turn it back over to automation.
Now for the pilots on board like me and him were, you know, that gives you the little you know stomach drop like, oh, is this going to work? Because, you know, once you have, you know, once things are working with your hands on them, you don’t really want to give it back, you know, just in, just in case there’s a problem in that transition. But the team had scrubbed all of the data and said, hey, you know, we think this is a good idea. Let’s try. It’s far enough away if we have a problem again, you know, we can take over again manually. And, you know, 10 meters out from the space station is essentially our stopping point to make sure we had good control ability. So as luck would have it, though we were lucky that day, automation took over at 200 and the thrusters held on until till we docked. So that was a good day at that point in time, you know.
And it’s a test flight, so. One of those things that you know you don’t want to have happen, but you’re sort of happy that it happened on this flight, because there were so many eyes focused on how the spacecraft was flying and what we could do. And, you know, Butch and I had trained so much for this flight that I think we, the whole team, was the right team to be having these malfunctions and later on in the program, if, for some reason, we didn’t find it this flight, and then it popped up on another flight, you know, maybe not as many eyes would have been so laser focused on it. So I think if silver lining on everything this is, this is what test pilots are all about. It’s a, it’s a test pilots dream to be flying on the first spacecraft that’s going to fly and take our friends up to space, and hopefully we did the right things.
Dane Turner
Fantastic. How did it feel to make it to the space station? What was it like coming through, through the port to get it in?
Suni Williams
Oh, I think a lot of people have seen the video. I was super excited. A lot of good friends on the other side. And, you know, I know there was a culmination for a lot of people to get that to make that happen. And I just one. I also love the space station, as well as the people on board and the whole team. And so I think it was sort of like just the feeling everybody had, you know, at NASA, at Boeing, you know, at ULA, that we just, we made it, and just had to do it. Do a little dance.
Dane Turner
Once you docked it seemed like there were a lot of discussions on the ground about how to proceed with the mission. Were you involved in those discussions?
Suni Williams
Yeah, it’s, you know, it’s a little bit hard to be entirely involved from on the space station, right? Communication is great. We can talk to our families, we do video conferences and all that kind of stuff. But there are dropouts of the, you know, of the radio antenna, and then we lose some of the context when we’re having a meeting. So yes, Butch and I did dial into a lot of the meetings that were happening here on the ground. We also had a test plan while we’re up there that we had we were executing for the whole week right afterwards. So initial, some of those initial meetings we weren’t directly involved with just because we had our own schedule, flight plan of what we were doing. But as time war, you know, moved on during the summer, specifically as the testing was starting, we started to get involved as much as we could. We did two things actually, sort of like a like a little V in the road. One, we were getting a little bit of training from the folks that were up there, a little hand over, and helping them out as much as we can, because obviously both of us had lived up there before. We know how to fix the toilet and things like that. So volunteering to do anything that we could, to help with the space station, and then also dialing into the meetings, because that’s usually in our afternoon when we’re on the space station. So we had the morning to do some space ISS stuff, in the afternoon to do some Starliner stuff. And so did have the opportunity to listen in, ask questions, and tried to be part of the team down here that was looking at the data to make the decisions. The data, it took a long time for all the data to roll in. It took a- it was a little bit hard for the, I think, the communication, to really express what had happened and understand what had happened, and then what we are going to do for a fix. And so that was not I would just, I wouldn’t say it was obvious or clear to us, the path all the way forward that we would get back in the spacecraft. So we had a lot of questions for for the team on the ground.
Dane Turner
Once that decision was finally made to send Starliner back, un crewed and for you to stay on Space Station, was there any sort of like mental shift there about needing to stay for a longer time?
Suni Williams
Absolutely. But I think, honestly, throughout the summer, the thought had sort of grown on all of us, as we were seeing, reading some of the tea leaves and, you know, waiting for the data to come in, and then seeing, you know, like, you know what the data was and if it could actually answer all the questions. So we had a pretty good inkling that, you know, this was not entirely conclusive without some more testing. Specifically, you know, the the hot fire testing while we are docked to the space station of the SM thrusters, and then subsequently a request to fire the CM thrusters as well. That didn’t actually end up happening, but that was in the bucket list, if we would have thought about, really seriously, thought about coming home. I mean, I don’t say that lightly, a lot of people were really thinking that we should have come home on that spacecraft. And during the time frame we could come home on that spacecraft, I think Butch and I just didn’t see, like I mentioned, all of the T’s crossed, all the i’s dotted, and everything that could be done, done before we put somebody in that spacecraft, while there was potentially another spacecraft coming up that didn’t have issues. So we were seeing that happen. The mental shift was when the decision was made. And, you know, we were dialed into the PCB, and we could hear, you know, the program manager make the decision with everybody’s, you know, everybody else weigh in vote. Then he makes the decision, and I think it was a little bit of relief. There was a lot of consternation to, honestly, in my Suni Williams opinion, a lot of consternation. Should we? Shouldn’t we? And once the decision was made, I think it’s clear for people to go down a path, so that, I think that was actually a little bit of a really relief versus I think a lot of people think it was like, Oh no, we’re staying up here for a long time. I don’t think so. I think it was more of like, okay, now we have a really solid plan, and let’s work with this plan.
Dane Turner
And you mentioned this in a number of interviews and in-flight events on the station, that this was not a scenario we’re unprepared for. Can you talk about how your training flow on the ground prior to the mission, and how you were ready to support the science and the space walks that were going on up there.
Suni Williams
Yeah. So before we went, of course, we were both Butch and I have flown on the space station before and lived there. We have both done space walks. We have both done robotic operations. And so we kept all of our skills going while we are doing all, many years of training for Starliner to get ready for it. Of course, the major focus is all the critical parts of Starliner, but we kept doing like the, periodic training prerequisites to make sure that we were qualified. So not every week, but like every month or month and a half, we would do a robotics class, or we would do or every quarter, we would do an NBL run to make sure our skills were still honed. And you know, I think you know, as the station has grown, skills based training has really become the thing. You know, in the very beginning, when we were building a space station, it was very specific to the things that we were going to do on those space shuttle flights to for construction. But as the station, as we’ve lived on station longer and longer, our skills based training has really paid off, because things are different, always different than you planned. Something’s going to be it’s going to be a different robotic trajectory, it’s going to be a different task on the space walk. And so you just need to have the skills. And so we felt very confident that we are ready to stay on the space station. If needed, we had to, we had to convince a couple people to have our space walking clothes flown up. But they got it too, you know. This is the, you know, the first flight of this spacecraft. And if, by chance, there was something that went wrong, it would be nice to have that stuff and be additive for the space station. And so that worked out really well.
Dane Turner
It did! And this was not your first long duration stay on the station. Your first mission the ISS was in 2006 and you’ve been commander twice. How has the station changed over the years?
Suni Williams
Oh my gosh, it’s ridiculously changed, like, it was amazing, because the first flight we were still building it, right? So we didn’t have all of the, all of the rooms on the, you know, connected to the space station yet. I think it ended at the beginning of the Lab, at the front of the Lab, the forward Lab. Now we have Node Two, where everybody is a living quarters, and then the JEM, the Japanese module and the European module. And we also have a closet, which is great, you know, the PMM so we have all sorts. And the gym that wasn’t there either. Our exercise equipment was like in the middle of the hallway, and we were using the Russian treadmill way back in the day. And as this and my second flight, those modules were there, but we were still working on getting all the science going, and now, while I was up there, I was just amazed at how much power and resources we have, as well as the, you know, the crew of seven, that could really get a lot of things done, not only the maintenance, but really dive into the science. Spend a half a day doing stem cell research, a half a day doing DNA sequencing or a combustion experiment with the investigators. This is also something that changed. We used to never really talk to the investigators. Now we have the investigators in our ear, step by step, going through, making sure we’re doing these experiments correctly and as well as having our own observations and can relay those directly to the investigator. So the space station is cooking! As I’d say, it’s in its heyday right now, with everything it needs to really advance us in microgravity research. And I would say that highly recommend that we keep doing that as long as we can, because we have five more years of exploration science that we can do there on a 24/7 basis. And after that, you know, we’re going to have spacecraft going to space, but a little less frequently, and not with the steady microgravity environment that we have up there. So this is a great time for the space station right now. And I was so happy that we got to be part of that.
Dane Turner
That’s fantastic. And while you were there, you did two space walks, which brings you to fourth on the all time space walk duration records. You’re the third for a US astronaut, and first for a woman astronaut. What’s it like to have been in space for that long, outside of a spacecraft?
Suni Williams
You know, I don’t want to say I’m complacent, but it feels right. It feels regular. The suit always feels good on me. I, you know, and I, when I get into it, feels initially uncomfortable, but once you get into it, you start doing some type of task, even if it’s just getting ready. While you’re getting ready for the task it gets, it feels like it feels better and better. It’s like a, you know, glove that just molds to your body. For me, I’m lucky. I have some pretty long arms, and so doing some of the tasks and reaching some of the the equipment is easier than others who have shorter arms. So for me, I love doing space walks, and I would have loved to do a couple more, just if we could have, just because, just because they’re fun and they’re interesting and it’s it’s tiring, it’s athletic. And, you know, I grew up as a competitive swimmer. I love that aspect. I love that aspect of the small team, you know, on our second space walk, that first of all, the team that gets you in the space suit gets you ready to go over 200 steps, you can’t miss one, or you’re just going to mess it up, so the other guy’s not going to be too happy with you. So, you know, there’s a that’s a huge team in the spacecraft, also, who fly you around on the robotic arm, but it’s also the huge team that’s in Mission Control. We have people monitoring, watching every little aspect of the space suit, of the systems of the space station, of the systems of the air lock of the arm, making sure everything is operating and ticking. And that doesn’t just happen in one day. That happens over a long period of time, as people prepare and get ready for these things. And so that is the coolest thing at the end of the space walk, when you can come in and you know that whole team is just like, yes, that really feels good. Specifically on our second space walk, when we got the radio frequency group the RFG off, this thing is a little beast, and required a couple space walks before us to try and figure out, like, what is the method to get this thing off? And, you know, it was pretty hand intensive to get off a little nut, a little washer, and then five more washers and not and make that nothing’s captive and it’s all floating around and grabbing them out of the space and sticking them in your trash bag was a little bit tedious and a little bit hard, but it was I, I felt the cheers in the control room when we got it off. I, you know, I think I said something like, “holy moly,” because it just it popped off with a, with a, with a, with a, we called it a bolt pillar, just essentially a crowbar. My husband was like, “What are you doing with a crowbar in space, near your space, near your helmet, be careful!” But we’re able to get that thing off. And I think, like I said, everybody was cheering, and that is, that’s the best feeling, because we know that it’s, it’s a huge team effort.
Dane Turner
Oh, that’s wonderful. Can you tell me a little bit about, more about your crew mates that you were up there with?
Suni Williams
Oh, yeah, sure. So wow, what a selection of crew mates. So when we got up there, you know, the Commander of the Space Station was Oleg Kononenko, and he was up there for a long time. So that was a year for him and Nikolai [Chub]. Both of them stayed, and they changed, changed out their American Crew members. Laurel [O’Hara] was not there. When we were there, Laurel had flown with them, but then went home, and Tracy [Dyson] came up with another crew, and Tracy was part of their three crew for Soyuz. And then Crew-8 was there, which was Mike Barrett, Matt Dominick, Jeanette Epps, and our Sasha [Alexander Grebenkin], little complicated name, so we’ll just leave him at Sasha, the first Sasha, big Sasha, so that those guys were great. They, you know, open arms welcomed us as we came into the space station. And, of course, great friends. Tracy, I’m in the same astronaut class with her, so we’ve known each other for a long time. Mike Barrett, have known him. He was one class after us for a long time. I worked a lot with Matt Dominick, worked with Jeanette Epps, actually was supposed to be on Starliner one with Jeanette, so had spent some time with her, Sasha, big Sasha as first time I really met him, so, but it was great. And, you know, and Oleg I had actually- Oleg was sort of the same astronaut class as Tracy and I on the cosmonaut side. So we’ve known each other a long time.
And then, and then the switch out happened, of course, with the Soyuz crew. So Aleksey [Ovchinin] and Ivan [Vagner] and Don came up and Don Pettit, oh, my god. He’s the most awesome person to fly in space with, just because every day something’s new. I mean, every day you look at your schedule and it’s new, but every day you wake up and he gets up at like four, I get up at like five, and it’s like, what are you doing today? You know, you’re making crystals. You’re, you know, you’re you’re burning something, you’re magnetizing something, you’re doing something super cool. And it’s just because he has thought about micro gravity so much, and how we can demonstrate the uniqueness of living and working in space. He’s just amazing. Aleksey, I didn’t know him that well. He is so much fun, and he’s so gracious, and just a very warm and gentle individual, and also a lot of fun. Ivan, again, the same, just like him, very calm, cool, collected, just a lot of fun. And I’m mentioning this fun because then Nick and our little Alex [Gorbunov] came up on Crew-9. And I don’t know if you remember, but Nick and Aleksey were on the Soyuz that had the abort. So it was like old, old fo- old time home. You know, everybody who had done something together was up there. Tracy had trained with Ivan and Aleksey as well. And, you know, like I said, Nick and Alex, Alex and Alex, our two Sashas were in the same astronaut, cosmonaut class, so that it was, like, everybody’s like, a big reunion. So it was so, so much fun and really great to be up there. You know, the longer part of our mission was with crew nine. So my and I didn’t even mention Butch, who’s like my brother, you know. So me and Butch and Nick and Alex, as well as Aleksey, Ivan and Don. And this is the group that we ended up spending the latter part, are really our Expedition 72 with. And we had a great time. Always having a great time. It was, and, you know, it was a lot of work. But by Friday night, it was like we would announce it in the daily planning conference, was like, hey, you know, it’s, it’s happy Friday, or it’s a fun Friday. And so by Friday after work, we usually had our DPCs canceled because everything had got, you know, had been finished. And we would end up having dinner together down in the SM and end up doing some karaoke and just having a great time so and reminiscing and telling stories. So I couldn’t have asked for a better bunch of brothers. I think people have seen our video where we have holiday we had holidays together, and we just we laughed a lot. We laughed a lot.
Dane Turner
That sounds wonderful. So with this flight, you’re now number two on the list of US astronauts with the most cumulative time in space was 608 days, and you’re tied for sixth with Butch on the longest single duration stay in space at 286 days. What’s it like to have spent so much time off the planet?
Suni Williams
Oh gosh, maybe we should ask my family. Maybe they’re happy that time is off for so long. I don’t know, but, you know, it doesn’t. I think, I think they know that’s in me, that my all of my family, including my husband, who has now said, like, probably that’s enough, all were fine with this. You know, they all, they all knew, I personally love it. I could stay forever, you know, up in space. It’s just so much fun, except for the fact that your family’s back here on the ground, and you wish everybody could come up and experience this. Wish everybody on, you know, could take a lap around the planet and see it from that perspective. But, you know, I am so lucky to have had the experiences that I’ve had. I’m I, you know, this time, I didn’t take as many pictures because we had some amazing photographers, and my amateur photography, I didn’t want to get in the way, sort of. But I took enough pictures, I think, of people inside to create, to maintain those memories with all of us, which is wonderful. And I have all of those other photographs from the guys outside, because we had some unique time up there, like last summer, you know, we could complain about, you know, the situation, but the sun activity was incredible. We had the best Aurora. And that continued all last year. Every now and then we’d have a day that was just like, incredible Aurora. You just have to stop what you’re doing and take a look outside. Like, how could this be new? But every time, it’s new. And then we saw two, we had two comets while we were up there, and then they, you know, they went around the sun, and we could see them come out the backside with a longer tail. Like, amazing, amazing stuff! I mean, you have to just stop for a moment and remember where you are as well as the task that you’re doing, and really appreciate it. And it just never gets old. And it’s a very unique place for that matter. And I always like to hear like when Nichole, for example, Nichole Ayers comes down just as a rookie, and Jonny Kim like, what was your impression? What was the coolest thing you saw? You know, just because it’s it’s fun to get a new perspective, new eye and on this unique environment where we live. So I hope they really enjoyed their enjoying their time up there.
Dane Turner
That’s wonderful. So you mentioned the arrival of Nick and Alexander. They came up on the Crew-9 Dragon, and that was going to be the spacecraft that you returned on. This is your fourth spacecraft to fly in. How did you prepare for the flight home?
Suni Williams
Oh yeah. So, you know, it’s interesting. I was part of the initial crew cadre for commercial crew program. So I had spent a lot of time at SpaceX in Hawthorne, and actually worked a lot with the folks who were designing the suit. Suit design was already essentially made, but, you know, little tweaks here and there are things, things to think about. So I had been in a suit, quite a bit a SpaceX suit, so I knew what it was like. A lot different from the, you know, the essentially the leg entry versus the, you know, the back entry of a suit. It’s a unique design. You have to get used to it. It’s okay. I knew that was coming the spacecraft and how it evolved. Also, we did some work with the cockpit when I was on the cadre, but it has evolved incredibly, and it’s great. You know, Bob [Bhenkin] and Doug [Hurley] did an amazing. Amazing job the last couple years before their flight to really get it squared away. And then all the inputs from the, you know, crew one through crew eight, every, every time there’s iterations and improvements, and part of that was the training. And the training is in a handbook that we had electronically up there, and we can go through and review everything we also had, you know, the mission director from SpaceX said, you know, we had a couple conferences with just to focus us on the right things, to go over and understand. And then, you know, SpaceX is a unique company, and they make it fun. So, you know, so it’s a fun way to learn is to quiz yourself, right? So, in their electronic handbook, they have this, like, pick your own adventure, like there’s some malfunction, and then you do some activity. You know, electronically, you say you’re going to go down this path, and then it takes you to the next thing to the next thing to the next thing, like subliminal learning a little bit about what equipment to use, what to do, what your choices are, and things like that. So it was actually fun, and the team was great, because they allotted us time to do that. Nick and Alex were, you know, incredible and patient, and made sure that Butch and I knew all of the priorities, because it sometimes it’s overwhelming with a lot of information. And so what’s the priority? That was the job of Nick and and Alex, and they did an incredible job. We had the opportunity to do a port relocate, which was like a warm up to coming home. And it was actually- you practice. You do it like you are going to come home, because you never know if the docking system is going to have a problem or something like that. And so we had essentially practiced everything, getting into suits, closing the hatches, pressure, doing the pressure checks, undocking, and then coming back and docking. So that was a like I said, a great warm up. Now, coming home, of course, that, like I said, dramatic, not dramatic, right? So it was not dramatic, because things happened as they were supposed to happen for coming home. But there was a couple surprises, because, you know, like, we didn’t train for this. So, you know, it’s like, oh, okay, so in the middle of the night, and I, we might be talking about entry later, but it’s it was funny, in the we had how many hours, 17 hour undocked to landing, and so we went to we got in the spacecraft and went to sleep, and then woke up the next day and ready to to land. But in the middle of the night, all the engines are firing. What is happening? What is happening? Something super cool. We lower the orbit to get to the, you know, so that we can get to the right place for our landing zone. And so looking out the window after the orbit was lower, it’s like, wow, we haven’t flown like this. I don’t know the exact altitude, but we were at like, 400 kilometers or down somewhere 200 kilometers, a lot different perspective, a lot different view. I was like, Oh, neat. This is, this is cool. So, like I said, not dramatic, but dramatic. It all happened as it was, but things are happening on the spacecraft. Like, is that supposed to happen? Yeah, yeah, that’s okay. That’s it. We’re lowering our orbit for our landing point. So very, very interesting and very cool. And again, Nick was incredible. I sat next to Nick and I could see his displays as well as I’m following along on my own iPad, and knew exactly what was going to happen, Alex and Nick on the other side, same thing. You know that his displays were right up there. So Butch can see what everything that was going on.
Dane Turner
What was it? What were your feelings as you were preparing to leave the space station?
Suni Williams
Oh, you know, mixed emotions. And I say this about spacewalks too. I think it’s every emotion known to man, that you go through happy, sad, hot, cold, you know, before a space walk. And this, this was not a lot different, too, because I’ve been in the just astronaut office for a long time. I’ve flown three long duration space flights. Can’t really ask for more, and one of them a test flight, you know, just all you know, everything was in my career has been awesome, and this was essentially the culmination of it. And I saw, I sort of had a feeling that, like the the R word, the evil R word, was around the corner of “Retire” or not flying anymore. So, so that’s also was weighing on my mind a little bit, what a wonderful place to be, what a great spots, you know, personally, to be but, and, you know, also, you look around you like, I hope we left it in, you know, at the very end, I was like, everybody clean up stuff, because we have to leave the space station in good working order for Crew-10! You know, that’s, that’s sort of, you know, like, make sure everything’s just squared away and right. And as you look around, finally, just go, Gosh, I don’t know if I’ll ever get back up here again.
Dane Turner
We were just talking a little bit about your return flight home. What was descent like in the dragon you you hadn’t really trained specifically for Dragon. What was it like to fly or to return in that spacecraft?
Suni Williams
So I’ll just say it’s comfortable! It’s really comfortable. The seats, suit combination is something that I worked on a lot with Starliner as well as Dragon a while ago. And I think I just been lucky enough to have flown on shuttle and Soyuz, too, to sort of really think about that. Anyway, that is… A+! You know, that’s so it’s really comfortable. The seats are really nice. The way they activate is ideal for the landing. Position. So I would say the landing was great. The Descent is fast, but it’s always fast, and it’s impressive to see the, you know, the plasma on the windows right near your feet. My feet were on I’m on the left side. My feet were right near the window, and I could see all the plasma. I could see it over there on butchers too, if I looked up a little by his feet and the window. So, just impressive, you know, coming home. And I think he’s mentioned it before, it’s like, no matter what spacecraft it is, it is barreling through the atmosphere, burning stuff up as it goes. And it’s a little overwhelming, I think, emotionally, because she’s like, Oh my God, you know, we are these little pink bodies in that little spacecraft, you know, coming through the atmosphere. But it was, it was comfortable. It was predictable. Nick, like I mentioned, Nick and Alex really explained everything that was going on. You know, we had it on our iPads, as well as the displays to see every tick that we are going through. And then, but the best thing, of course, they had it real clearly, I think, from the camera on their displays, the the drogue chutes coming out, and then the parachutes opening up, and it’s like the best feeling ever. Like you can, you can feel it in your body as well as see it on the camera, the the deceleration. It’s like, okay, we got this. We’re coming home now. It’s nice.
Dane Turner
Speaking of being home. Leadership wanted you to have a great welcome. When you got back to Houston. How was it seeing familiar faces and team members who contributed to your flight?
Suni Williams
You know, overwhelming. It was really, really great. And we had a feeling that there were going to be people. We actually said, you know, why not? Let’s, let’s bring people, you know, we knew, we all knew that we’re going to feel a little bit crappy, but that’s, that’s how it goes after you’ve been in space for a little while. But we know our friends and family don’t care, and they they know it too. They’ve all been in the business, worked in the business, around the business, know the people. So it was just awesome to see so many people out there. I wish I had the strength and the ability to go and run around and hug everybody, but as much as I could, I was like, hello, hello. So yeah, it was it. And I will just say my biggest impression about this whole mission, and I’ve told little kids this, so I hope their parents don’t think I’m too weird. But people are nice, people are good, and people care. Like, people you don’t even know that. Like, have come up since we’ve been back and been like, you know, we were just hoping you’d be fine, blah, blah, blah. It’s like so incredible, like, how there’s a common feeling of taking care of each other. So I think that it was overwhelming but reassuring that humanity is pretty good.
Dane Turner
So NASA likes to talk about our safety first culture. We always do lessons learned after a mission everything. Can you talk a little bit about how that might apply to this mission?
Suni Williams
Oh, gosh, yeah. So many lessons learned, like I just quickly alluded to in the launch time frame, with our, you know, with our launch partners, ULA, they learned a bunch of stuff. Just putting people on a rocket, how we’re going to go through the count with people versus a payload, huge. We learned some lessons learned. Now, the whole mission, in particular for Starliner, like the things that happen with the thrusters of the helium beforehand, and the decision making processes, I this is the time we have been doing it, to go back look at all of those decisions, think about what pressures were influencing those decisions and and think about the questions that we could ask in the future for future programs and and really, like, dive into it, and we’ve had a number of interviews and discussions with people about all of those things and how we could make this better. Because this isn’t just about Starliner. You know, our future at NASA is research and development and exploration, and we have, you know, new spacecraft, of course, with SLS and Orion, the HLS landing system, rover systems that will all have people on board. And that interaction is really tricky and important. It both, you know, both in one, and we have to make sure we ask all the right questions. In particular, with our contract friends, who are, you know, contractor friends who, you know, have the same motivations, but also different motivations. And we have to make sure those are all married up, and we’re doing the right thing all the time. And Starliner, I think, is, is like the little you know, the role model in a way of learning how to do this.
Dane Turner
So while you were on station, the media often portrayed you and the mission using the word “stranded.” Did you ever feel like that was the case?
Suni Williams
No, you know, I and, and I mentioned that, I said, I, I guess Butch and I could see how people would say, would say that, or see it that way. But no, I never really felt personally stranded. Okay, so maybe there was not optimum ways to come home initially we like when we had our safe eight Haven each, all three crews went to their different spacecraft, and at that time we were going to come home in Starliner. And we were like, okay, you know, we’re going to come home in star. Miner, and we anticipated that we could have some issues. But we, you know, had faith that the system would, with all of the redundancies, would get us home, and particularly in a bad case where the space station was not a viable place. So that was the beginning part. Then secondly, we had created some seats on the Dragon that was there in case there was a problem while we didn’t have other seats in a specific Dragon. So we created some seats made of on-orbit materials, foam in particular, and we we had great folks here on the ground, a huge team of people working on making sure we are strapped in completely, you know, for the all of the impact loading, they did tests on the ground to try it, to make sure that that was okay and everything. So that was a way home. And then thirdly, and that was in the interim time frame when Crew-8 was there, and Starliner had left, and then Crew-9 arrived, and then we had seats. So we never felt that we were stranded. There was seats, not optimum seats to come home, but we never felt like we were stranded. And I took a little, I think, not offense, but a little like, specifically, I wanted to point out: No, we weren’t stranded. Because there’s so many people. It wasn’t like people forgot about us at all. I mean, there’s tons of people here on the ground who are working so diligently to, one, try to understand the problem; two, give us seats in the meantime; and then three, figure out the final solution to get us back home. So there was a lot of work going on. Nobody was we weren’t feeling like we were left up there.
Dane Turner
You’re one of very few people who have flown on multiple spacecraft. You’ve flown on shuttle, Soyuz, Starliner and now Dragon. What kind of perspective that give you that that’s really unique?
Suni Williams
You know, I’m I feel very lucky to have done that. And it’s like, again, a test pilots dream that you can fly different aircraft spacecraft, and you can evaluate them and look at them. So I think what’s cool about that is, and even in the beginning, when it when there were few people flying shuttle and Soyuz like, hey, you know, look at how they solve this problem. It’s not the same way, and you can solve the problem differently. And now, even more exacerbated with Starliner and Dragon and more spacecraft coming online. If you know Dream Chaser, or, you know, Blue Origin. If they, you know, they come online for orbital, New Glenn, it would be, it’s great to, like, look at all of these ways people are solving the problem. It doesn’t have to be the same way. We could definitely share lessons learned, but creativity, innovation, to be solving the problem is awesome. And we can, as a NASA employee, we can take the data and the information that we’ve got by flying all these different spacecraft and then optimize for our next generation of exploration vehicles. Like there’s definitely, you know, benefits to, for example, the Russian space suit. You can get in it and close the door behind you without anybody else having you to help you. If you notice a US space suit has everybody coming in and trying to help you, try to get in that suit. Also, a lot of the components, I’m just using space suit as an example, components in the Orlon are removable and replaceable, whereas the, you know, the EMU, it’s very fine pieces, non-captive bolts, not really designed to do on orbit maintenance, but these are the types of things that you start thinking about. Like our suit, our emu, is much easier to work in, right? It’s lower pressure that you can move your hands. It’s little sports car compared to the pickup truck. So there’s goods and bads to each and you can compare and contrast spacecraft as well, automation versus manual versus touch screen, all of that you can start to compare and contrast and figure out what’s the maybe the optimum for the for the next generation exploration spacecraft that we’re going to go leave low Earth orbit and move on. So I’m feel very lucky pass down as much as my experience and information as possible with our teams here and hopefully help out in the future.
Dane Turner
We’ve talked about your records of duration in space, of space walking. Are there any other records that you hold that we missed?
Suni Williams
I have a feeling, I have to do some calculations, but I have a feeling I’ve probably peed in the most spacecraft of anybody, so we’ll see. I think it’s close to 10. I have to do some calculation, see if anybody else has had that a wonderful opportunity to try the bathrooms and all these different spacecraft.
Dane Turner
So that’s, that’s 10 different spacecraft. So a couple of different Soyuz, a couple of different…
Suni Williams
A shuttle, two shuttles, two Soyuz. While I was up on the ISS, because we trade out Soyuz and I needed to use the bathroom because we were doing space walks, is a different configuration than the in the day the ISS and there’s two different toilets for the ISS. Could have been three, but I didn’t, I forgot to do pee in one of those. And Starliner and and Dragon, let’s see. I think there was another one that I was thinking about. I’ll remember, but close to 10 different spacecraft. And I would challenge anybody in the office to see if they’ve peed in that many spacecraft.
Dane Turner
That’s incredible. So what’s next for you?
Suni Williams
Oh, gosh, I don’t know. In the immediate future, for the next six months, working again, talking to folks who had helped us on our mission. And you know, we’re going up to headquarters, which is great. Want to say thank you and and talk about the the future missions and what lessons we learned from this one. Also, Glenn Research Center in Ohio, and SpaceX we’re going out there. We’ve talked to, went to Huntsville and and Kennedy, and then, of course, been here at JSC. But in other little some of the smaller suppliers, some of the smaller companies that have done experiments just to share the data and information from them. So that’s that’s in the that has been going on, it’s going to happen, and probably until October or so.
And then, in the meantime, though, we have- you know, we’re focusing on going to the moon. And part of going to the moon is vertical landing, sort of like capsules, but you actually want to control it and not sort of crash into the moon, right? So part of that program, we are bringing on helicopters here at Johnson Space Center for some of this vertical perception landing training. And I’m going to be involved a little bit with that, actually going to Pensacola to talk to some of our Navy helicopter brethren about that this afternoon. So working on the next steps for us, getting us closer and closer to going to the moon and being successful when we try and land there.
Dane Turner
Oh, that’s fantastic. Suni, thank you so much for coming on Houston We Have a Podcast today. We’ve really enjoyed having you on.
Suni Williams
My pleasure. It’s always fun, and we have a great organization, so it’s easy to talk about it all day long.
Dane Turner
Thanks for sticking around.
You can check out the latest from around the agency nasa.gov, and you can find our full collection, and all the other wonderful NASA podcasts at nasa.gov/podcasts.
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This interview was recorded on August 5, 2025.
I, Dane Turner, produce the show. Audio engineers are Will Flato and Daniel Tohill, and our social media is managed by Reagan Scharfetter and Kelcie Howren. Houston We Have a Podcast was created and is supervised by Gary Jordan. Thanks to Courtney Beasley and Donna Fugitt for helping us to bring this episode to life. And of course, thanks again to Suni Williams for taking the time to come on the show.
Give us a rating and feedback on whatever platform you’re listening to us on, and tell us what you think of our podcast. We’ll be back next week.
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