Washington
\nNASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, who spent a record-breaking 665 days in space, has retired from the space agency.<\/p>\n
Whitson, the 58-year-old NASA astronaut, holds the US record for most cumulative time in space.<\/p>\n
She also claimed the title for most spacewalks by a woman 10 spacewalks totalling 60 hours and 21 minutes — and set the record for most time spent in space by a US astronaut, placing eighth on the all-time space endurance list.<\/p>\n
“It’s been the greatest honour to live out my lifelong dream of being a NASA Astronaut,” Whitson tweeted late on Friday.<\/p>\n
Whitson also served as chief of the astronaut corps from 2009 to 2012, becoming both the first woman to hold the position and the first non-military astronaut corps chief.<\/p>\n
As an astronaut, Whitson completed three long-duration missions to the International Space Station, setting records on each.<\/p>\n
Travelling for the first time to the International Space Station in 2002, Whitson took part in 21 science investigations and became NASA’s first space station science officer.<\/p>\n
In 2008, she returned to the ISS and became the first female commander of the space station.<\/p>\n
During her most recent mission, from November 2016 to September 2017, Whitson became the first woman to command the space station twice.<\/p>\n
\u201cThank to all who have supported me along the way. As I reminisce on my many treasured memories, it’s safe to say my journey at NASA has been out of this world!” Whitson tweeted.<\/p>\n
Born in 1960, Whitson, a native of Iowa, first came to NASA in 1986 as a National Research Council Resident Research Associate at NASA’s Johnson Space Centre in Houston.<\/p>\n
She served in a number of scientific roles, including project scientist for the Shuttle-Mir Programme and co-chair of the US-Russian Mission Science Working Group, before her selection to the astronaut corps in 1996.<\/p>\n
“Peggy Whitson is a testament to the American spirit,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a statement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Washington NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, who spent a record-breaking 665 days in space, has retired from the space agency. Whitson, the 58-year-old NASA astronaut, holds the US record for most cumulative time in space. She also claimed the title for most spacewalks by a woman 10 spacewalks totalling 60 hours and 21 minutes — and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34289,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34288"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34290,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34288\/revisions\/34290"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}