Indian-American record-making astronaut Sunita Williams along with her two other astronauts took off for her second space odyssey on a Russian Soyuz rocket. It took off successfully from a cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The other two members on board are Russian Soyuz Commander Yuri Malenchenko and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency flight engineer Akihiko Hoshide. They are on a four-month mission on the International Space Station (ISS).

Sunita Williams:

• Born: September 19, 1965, in Euclid, Ohio
• Williams is American astronaut and United States Navy officer who holds the record for longest spaceflight by a woman.
• She was assigned to the International Space Station as a member of Expedition 14 and then joined Expedition 15.
• She holds the record of the longest space flight (195 days) among female space travelers
• She is of Slovenian descent from her mother’s side and Indian descent from her father’s which shows she is an Indian-Slovenian American.

Education:

• Bachelor of Science degree in Physical science from the United States Naval Academy
• Master of Science degree in Engineering Management from Florida Institute of Technology.

Her major space voyages:

• Williams took off to the International Space Station (ISS) with STS-116, aboard the shuttle Discovery, on December 9, 2006 to join the Expedition 14 crew.
• Williams became the first person to run the Boston Marathon from the space station on April 16, 2007
• Currently she is on a 4-month trip to the ISS