SUNITA L .
WILLIAMS
1965
SPACE WALKER
Sunita Williams in a spacesuit . Photo : NASA .
Pilot , officer , prominent astronaut with several International Space Station records , one of the few people to have been in space more than once .
Born in Euclid , Ohio , on 19 September 1965 to an ethnic Indian father and a mother descended from Slovenian immigrants , Sunita L . Williams grew up in Massachusetts and attended the Naval Academy in Annapolis , where she graduated in physics . She trained to be a helicopter pilot and became a test pilot for different types of aircraft . In 1995 , she completed a master ’ s degree in engineering management at the Florida Institute of Technology . After visiting the space center in Houston and meeting with astronauts , she decided to pursue a career in space exploration . Williams was selected for astronaut training by NASA from among several thousand applicants and became a part of their astronaut team .
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