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January 9th, 2014

NASA's Open House On The Space Station...Go Where Not Many Have Gone Before (ISS)


[SatNews] So you haven't been recruited by NASA to be an astronaut, but you'd give anything to see an up close and personal look inside the ISS.

Now you can and the tour guide is astronaut Sunni (Sunita) Williams who set a record for longest duration spaceflight by a woman.

Take a tour of the International Space Station hosted by Captain Sunita (Sonny) Williams just prior to her return to Earth in the video link here.  We get a taste of what it is to live and work in near Zero G.

Captain Williams safely landed in Kazakhstan November 18, 2012 following a 127-day tour and command of the ISS.  It was her second stay on the orbiting craft.

Earlier on NASA Astronaut Sunita Williams set a new record for the longest duration spaceflight by a woman. At that time, Williams surpassed Shannon Lucid’s mark of 188 days, 4 hours set in 1996.

Williams began her record-setting flight when she launched with the crew of STS-116 in December 2006. The Massachusetts native remained onboard the station as a member of the Expedition 14 crew and then joined the Expedition 15 crew in April. Her spaceflight will come to a close when she returns to Earth aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis with the STS-117 crew.

Although this is only her first spaceflight, Williams also became the record-holder for most hours outside a spacecraft by a female by completing four spacewalks during Expedition 14 with a total time of 29 hours, 17 minutes.

 “It was very exciting to watch her spacewalks and to watch her accumulate more spacewalk time than any other female in the universe,” said Lucid, who set the previous female space duration record while flying aboard the Russian Mir Space Station. “These [long-term] flights are providing the needed confidence so that some day in the near future we can depart low-Earth orbit and head on out to Mars.”

Take a tour of the International Space Station hosted by Captain Sunita Williams just prior to her return to Earth in the video linked below.  Get a taste of what it is to live and work in near Zero G.

See more at.

 

Captain Sunni obegins her tour of the International Space Station with a look at its nodes — Harmony, Tranquility and Unity — which include the crew's sleeping quarters and hygiene station. Suni Williams continues the International Space Station tour with a look a the Destiny, Kibo and Columbus labs as well as the Quest airlock. (Photo right)

 

 

 

 

 

This is an eerie photo with what might appear to be two people suited up with a scarf on their head wherein it is simply the space suits at the ready for a mission spacewalk.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Suni Williams continues the tour of the International Space Station with a look at the station's observation deck, the cupola, as well as the Advanced Resistive Exercise Device in the Tranquility node, before heading into the Leonardo Permanent Multi-Purpose Module.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Keeping fit and working with muscle resistance means 'building' your exercise
equipment and then doing knee bends like never before...even with one leg left hanging in the gravity free environment.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

Expedition 33 Commander Suni Williams concludes her tour of theInternational Space Station with a visit to the Russian segment, which includes Zarya, the first segment of the station launched in 1998, and Zvezda, the central command post.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

She also takes a look at the Poisk and Rassvet modules where Soyuz spacecraft are docked.

 
 

 

Amazing.