During a press conference, Hill noted that NASA is looking to hand over the ISS to a private company in the next decade. When he returns to Earth next month, Williams will have logged a career total of more than 534 days off the planet. Virts spent a total of 213 days space and conducted three spacewalks for a total of 19 hours and 2 minutes outside of the space station.
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Wisconsin native and NASA astronaut Jeff Williams set the record for most cumulative days in space Wednesday. “It’s great to see another record broken”.
Williams replied, “That question’s not for me, that’s for my wife”.
Williams, 58, a retired Army colonel, rocketed into orbit in March along with two Russians.
NASA and the International Space Station are breaking up – for good, it appears. American astronaut Jeff Williams broke his retired NASA colleague Scott Kelly’s record for the most cumulative days in space on August 24, 2016, the USA space agency said. As was the case for their first spacewalk together August 19, Williams will be designated as extravehicular crew member 1 (EV1), wearing a spacesuit with a red stripe, while Rubins will be EV2, wearing a suit with no stripes.
Still, it took him about 10 years and multiple applications to win entry into NASA’s astronaut corps in 1996.
Williams, Soyuz TMA-20M commander Alexey Ovchinin and flight engineer Oleg Skripochka were launched to the space station March 18.
A West Point graduate in 1980, Williams later earned two master’s degrees and finished first in his class at the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School. It’ll obviously open up a new docking port for the space crafts being developed by SpaceX and Boeing, but also any future crafts, since it’s built to the International Docking System Standard. Williams is scheduled to land on September 6, for a record total of 534 days in space.
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Williams arrived at the space station on March 18, just a couple of weeks after Kelly completed his nearly year-long stay aboard the orbiting outpost.
