NASA astronaut Sunita Williams retires

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)’s Sunita Williams — one of two astronauts stuck for months at the International Space Station — has retired.

The space agency announced the news on Tuesday (January 20, 2026), saying her retirement took effect at the end of December.

Williams’ crewmate on Boeing’s ill-fated capsule test flight, Butch Wilmore, left NASA last summer.

The pair was launched to the space station in 2024, the first people to fly Boeing’s new Starliner crew capsule. Their mission should have lasted just a week, but stretched to more than nine months because of Starliner trouble. In the end, they caught a ride home last March with SpaceX.