Her job is out of this world

Did you ever wonder what it's like to work in space? Sunita Williams did, too. She grew up in the age of "The Jetsons," a futuristic cartoon about a family living in outer space. And in 1969, when she was 4 years old, she watched on TV as the first men to land on the moon took their initial steps on the dusty landscape.

Even at such a young age, she was awed. She thought she'd love to travel in space one day, but it was a long time before she seriously considered becoming an astronaut. The concept seemed a little too "out of this world." Since Ms. Williams loves animals, she thought she might become a veterinarian.

When she got older, however, she served in the US Navy, where she learned to fly helicopters. She knew that military pilots could become astronauts. But she also knew that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) liked pilot applicants to have experience flying jet aircraft, rather than propeller-powered craft such as helicopters.

Then, while Ms. Williams was in test-pilot school, her class took a trip to the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston. During the visit, she heard astronaut John Young speak about his space missions. One thing he said stuck out: He had to fly helicopters in preparation for landing the lunar module on the moon.

Suddenly, becoming an astronaut seemed within her reach. Ms. Williams started thinking that maybe NASA needed good helicopter pilots after all. So she applied, and in 1998, she was chosen to be an astronaut candidate.

As part of her training, she learned to fly a T-38 supersonic jet aircraft. She also learned water and wilderness survival skills. She learned some Russian, too. Then she worked in Moscow with the Russian Space Agency on Russia's contribution to the International Space Station (ISS). She even spent nine days living on the ocean floor as a crew member of NEEMO 2, the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations, because life underwater is a lot like life in space on the ISS.

Finally, in 2006, Ms. Williams was ready to launch into space. She left Earth aboard the space shuttle Discovery on Dec. 9.

Through her space travel, she has reached important milestones – and even set some records: Ms. Williams's father is from India, so when she blasted off into space, she became the second woman of Indian heritage to do so. (Kalpana Chawla was the first; she flew to space on the shuttle Columbia in 2003.)

Ms. Williams completed four spacewalks outside the ISS, more than any woman before her. She has also spent more total time on spacewalks than any other female astronaut (29 hours, 17 minutes). And when she returned to Earth on June 22 this year, she had spent 195 days in space, another record for women.

So just what is it like to be up in space? Well, you may know there's almost no gravity there, so people – and objects – on space missions are nearly weightless. This affects even the most basic daily tasks, Ms. Williams explained on a recent visit to Boston.

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