Q1. On 30th January 2025, Sunita Williams broke the spacewalking record among women astronauts. Whose record did she surpass?
- (a) Christina Koch
- (b) Peggy Whitson
- (c) Jessica Meir
- (d) Jeanette Epps
Answer & solution
Answer: (b) Peggy Whitson
On 30 January 2025 Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore completed a 5 hour 26 minute spacewalk outside the ISS, taking her career total to 62 hours 6 minutes over nine spacewalks.
That passed Peggy Whitson's mark of 60 hours 21 minutes — the most spacewalking time by any woman.
Revision note — Sunita Williams and women's spaceflight records
• Williams, a US Navy officer of Indian origin (father from Jhulasan, Gujarat), flew to the ISS on 5 June 2024 on the first crewed Boeing Starliner; the planned 8-day test became 286 days.
• She returned on 18 March 2025 in the SpaceX Crew Dragon (Crew-9), splashing down off Florida; her career total in space is 608 days over three missions.
• Peggy Whitson holds the record for the most cumulative days in space by an American and was the first woman to command the ISS (2007); she commanded Axiom-4 (2025) with India's Shubhanshu Shukla.
• Christina Koch holds the longest single spaceflight by a woman (328 days, 2019–20) and is on the Artemis II crew; with Jessica Meir she made the first all-female spacewalk on 18 October 2019.
• Kalpana Chawla was the first Indian-born woman in space (1997), lost in the Columbia disaster, 1 February 2003; Rakesh Sharma (1984) was the first Indian in space.
• The overall spacewalk record belongs to Anatoly Solovyev (Russia) — 16 spacewalks, over 82 hours.
Do not mix these up
• Most spacewalk time (women) vs longest single flight (women) — Whitson, then Williams, for cumulative spacewalk hours; Koch for the longest single mission.
• Sunita Williams vs Kalpana Chawla — Williams is US-born of Indian descent; Chawla was born in Karnal, Haryana.
Also asked from this topic: the total time Sunita Williams had spent in space on her return in March 2025 (608 days).