Sunita gets an early flight back from space station

Stephen Withers
Friday, 27 April 2007 13:15

Science - Space

A revised crew schedule means US astronaut Sunita Williams will return to Earth in June rather than August - but she will still set a record as the woman with the most time in space, to go along with her existing spacewalk record.

The change returns Williams' mission to its original duration. The original plan was to bring her home on the STS-118 shuttle mission, but she will now return to Earth as part of the STS-117 mission instead.

Hail damage to Atlantis' external fuel tank delayed STS-117, and this had a knock-on effect postponing STS-118 until August. STS-117 is now scheduled for launch on June 8.

Williams is set to break the women's spaceflight record of 188 days, held by Shannon Lucid since 1996. An August return would have allowed her to break the 215-day US record set last week by crewmate Mike Lopez-Alegria. The outright record of 437 days is held by Russian cosmonaut Valeriy Polyakov.

Williams will be replaced by Clay Anderson.