Houston: Indian-origin US astronaut Sunita Williams is among nine astronauts named by Nasa to fly on commercial spacecraft made by Boeing and SpaceX to and from the International Space Station, the research laboratory that orbits around Earth. Their voyages are scheduled to begin next year, and they would be the first American astronauts to launch from United States soil since 2011.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) retired its space shuttle fleet that year, and started sending astronauts to the ISS aboard the Russian Soyuz spacecraft, at a cost that has risen to $81million per seat. “What an exciting and amazing day,” Jim Bridenstine, Nasa’s administrator, said at Nasa’s Johnson Space Center in Houston on Saturday. The seven men and two women pumped their fists in the air and gave thumbs-up as they strode onto the stage.
Williams has been named for the Boeing programme - the first test flight scheduled to take place in the middle of 2019. She will be accompanied by commander Josh Cassada of the American navy, who will be making his first space journey. Williams has spent 322 days aboard the ISS since becoming an astronaut in 1998. While she was there in 2007, she completed the Boston Marathon - on a treadmill - in 4 hours 24 minutes, marking the first time an entrant had finished the race from orbit.
