Atreyee Poddar
Over the course of her career, Sunita clocked 608 days in space, making her one of NASA’s longest-flying astronauts ever. Long-duration missions are where things get real — bone density loss, radiation exposure, isolation, systems failures that don’t wait for Earth’s morning. Sunita thrived in that environment. She became a steady constant aboard the ISS, part astronaut, part systems manager, part psychological anchor for the crew.
Sunita holds the record for the most cumulative spacewalk time by a woman, and she’s fourth on NASA’s all-time list, period. Sunita built a reputation for calm precision out there — the kind of astronaut mission planners trust when the job is complicated, exposed, and non-negotiable.
In 2007, Sunita became the first person to run a marathon in space, strapped to a treadmill aboard the ISS, completing the Boston Marathon while orbiting Earth every 90 minutes.
In 2024, Williams flew aboard Boeing’s Starliner on what was meant to be a short test mission. Technical issues changed the script. The spacecraft couldn’t bring them back as planned. Sunita did what she’s always done: adapted. She and fellow astronaut Butch Wilmore folded seamlessly into ISS life, turning a delayed return into another extended mission.