Jeffrey Nels Williams (born January 18, 1958) is a retired

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the primary Land warfare, land service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is designated as the Army of the United States in the United States Constitution.Article II, section 2, clause 1 of th ...

officer and a

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

astronaut An astronaut (from the Ancient Greek (), meaning 'star', and (), meaning 'sailor') is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a List of human spaceflight programs, human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member of a spa ...

. He is a veteran of four

space flight Spaceflight (or space flight) is an application of astronautics to fly objects, usually spacecraft, into or through outer space, either with or without humans on board. Most spaceflight is uncrewed and conducted mainly with spacecraft such a ...

s and formerly held the American record for most days spent in space, which was surpassed in April 2017 by his colleague

Peggy Whitson Peggy Annette Whitson (born February 9, 1960) is an American biochemistry researcher, and astronaut working for Axiom Space. She retired from NASA in 2018, after serving as Chief Astronaut. Over all her missions, Whitson accumulated a total of ...

Early life and education

Williams was born in

Superior, Wisconsin Superior (; ) is a city in Douglas County, Wisconsin, United States, and its county seat. The population was 26,751 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Located at the western end of Lake Superior in northwestern Wisconsin, the city l ...

, and raised in

Winter, Wisconsin Winter is a village in Sawyer County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 325 at the 2020 census. The village is within the Town of Winter. History Winter was founded in 1904. It was named for W. C. Winter, a railroad official. A post ...

. During his childhood, Williams reached the rank of Star Scout, the third-highest in the

Boy Scouts of America Scouting America is the largest scouting organization and one of the largest List of youth organizations, youth organizations in the United States, with over 1 million youth, including nearly 200,000 female participants. Founded as the Boy Sco ...

. During the

Jamboree on the Air Jamboree on the Air, known by its acronym JOTA, is an international Scouting and Guiding activity held annually; it is on the third full weekend in October. First held in conjunction with the fiftieth anniversary of Scouting in 1957, it was devis ...

in October 2009 he communicated with Boy Scouts in the

National Scouting Museum The National Scouting Museum is the official museum of the Scouting America. Background The museum was first opened in 1959 in North Brunswick, New Jersey as the Johnston Memorial Museum. With the relocation of the Scouting America National Hea ...

Texas Texas ( , ; or ) is the most populous U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the we ...

from the International Space Station. Williams graduated from Winter High School in Winter, Wisconsin, in 1976. He earned a degree in applied science and engineering from the

U.S. Military Academy The United States Military Academy (USMA), commonly known as West Point, is a United States service academy in West Point, New York that educates cadets for service as commissioned officers in the United States Army. The academy was founded ...

in 1980, receiving his commission in the

NASA career

Williams served with the Army at

Johnson Space Center The Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (JSC) is NASA's center for human spaceflight in Houston, Texas (originally named the Manned Spacecraft Center), where human spaceflight training, research, and flight controller, flight control are conducted. ...

from 1987 to 1992 before training as a

test pilot A test pilot is an aircraft pilot with additional training to fly and evaluate experimental, newly produced and modified aircraft with specific maneuvers, known as flight test techniques.Stinton, Darrol. ''Flying Qualities and Flight Testin ...

. In 1996, he was selected by

as an astronaut candidate. In July 2002, Williams served as the commander of the NEEMO 3 mission aboard the Aquarius underwater laboratory, living and working underwater for six days. Jeffrey Williams in Destiny

STS-101

In 2000, Williams launched to space for the first time on

STS-101 STS-101 was a Space Shuttle mission to the International Space Station (ISS) flown by Space Shuttle '' Atlantis''. The mission was a 10-day mission conducted between 19 May 2000 and 29 May 2000. The mission was designated 2A.2a and was a resuppl ...

. STS-101 delivered supplies to the

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is a large space station that was Assembly of the International Space Station, assembled and is maintained in low Earth orbit by a collaboration of five space agencies and their contractors: NASA (United ...

, hauled up using a Spacehab double module and an Integrated Cargo Carrier pallet. Williams and fellow crew member James Voss performed a spacewalk and then reboosted the station from 230 miles (370 km) to 250 miles (400 km). They returned to Earth after over 9 days on orbit.

Expedition 13

Jeffrey Williams inside the Soyuz TMA-8 spacecraft

Williams also flew aboard the

Soyuz TMA-8 Soyuz TMA-8 was a Soyuz spacecraft, Soyuz mission to the International Space Station (ISS) launched by a Soyuz FG launch vehicle. Crew Soyuz TMA-8 was a transport mission for portions of the International Space Station (ISS) ''Expedition 13'' c ...

mission, replacing

Expedition 12 Expedition 12 (2005) was the 12th expedition to the International Space Station, launched from Kazakhstan using the Russian Soyuz TMA-7 spacecraft. The crew landed back in Kazakhstan on 8 April 2006 with the addition of the first Brazilian astron ...

astronaut

William S. McArthur William Surles McArthur Jr. (born July 26, 1951) is a retired United States Army Colonel (United States), colonel and NASA astronaut and a veteran of three Space Shuttle missions and one expedition to the International Space Station via the Russ ...

. He was previously in

orbit In celestial mechanics, an orbit (also known as orbital revolution) is the curved trajectory of an object such as the trajectory of a planet around a star, or of a natural satellite around a planet, or of an artificial satellite around an ...

as the Expedition 13 flight engineer and science officer aboard the International Space Station. He returned to Earth on September 28, 2006. During his six-month stint at the

in 2006, Williams orbited the Earth more than 2,800 times. During

Expedition 13 Expedition 13 was the 13th expedition to the International Space Station (ISS), and launched at 02:30 UTC on 30 March 2006. The expedition used the Soyuz TMA-8 spacecraft, which stayed at the station for the duration of the expedition for emerge ...

, he worked on hundreds of experiments, walked in space twice, and captured more photographs of the Earth than any other astronaut in history. Many of his photos are found in his book ''The Work of His Hands: A View of God's Creation from Space'', where he shares personal narrative and vivid photos of the Earth. On August 24, 2006, a taped message made by him to be played at an official NASA press conference was accidentally played over the air-to-ground loop, the tape revealing that the

Crew Exploration Vehicle The Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) was a component of the U.S. NASA Vision for Space Exploration plan. A competition was held to design a spacecraft that could carry humans to the destinations envisioned by the plan. The winning design was the ...

under development to replace the

Space Shuttle The Space Shuttle is a retired, partially reusable launch system, reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated from 1981 to 2011 by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the Space Shuttle program. ...

after 2010 would be named

Orion Orion may refer to: Common meanings * Orion (constellation), named after the mythical hunter * Orion (mythology), a hunter in Greek mythology Arts and media Fictional entities Characters and species * Orion (character), a DC Comics c ...

after the famed wintertime constellation.

Expedition 21/22

Williams also served as a flight engineer for

Expedition 21 Expedition 21 was the 21st long-duration mission to the International Space Station ( ISS). The expedition began on 11 October 2009, with Frank de Winne becoming the first ESA astronaut to command a space mission. The handover between Expedit ...

and assumed command of

Expedition 22 Expedition 22 was the twenty-second long duration crew flight to the International Space Station (ISS). This expedition began on 1 December 2009 when the Expedition 21 crew departed. For a period of three weeks, there were only two crew members; ...

in November 2009 having arrived on the International Space Station with his crew mates via

Soyuz TMA-16 The Soyuz TMA-16 () was a crewed flight to and from the International Space Station (ISS). It transported two members of the Expedition 21 crew and a Canadian entrepreneur from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to the ISS. TMA-16 was the 103r ...

which launched on September 30, 2009. Williams with Expedition 22 Flight Engineer

Maksim Surayev Maksim Viktorovich Surayev (, born 24 May 1972) is a Russian politician and retired cosmonaut. Surayev was a backup crew member for ISS Expeditions 17 and 19 from 2006 to 2009. In 2009, he commanded a spacecraft that traveled to the Internation ...

landed their Soyuz TMA-16 spacecraft on the steppes of

Kazakhstan Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a landlocked country primarily in Central Asia, with a European Kazakhstan, small portion in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the Kazakhstan–Russia border, north and west, China to th ...

on March 18, 2010, wrapping up a 167-day stay aboard the Space Station.

First live tweetup from space

ISS-47 Jeff Williams works with the SmartCycler in the Destiny lab

On October 21, 2009, Williams and his Expedition 21 crewmate,

Nicole Stott Nicole Marie Passonno Stott (born November 19, 1962) is an American engineer and a retired NASA astronaut. She served as a flight engineer on ISS Expedition 20 and Expedition 21 and was a mission specialist on STS-128 and STS-133. After 27 ye ...

, participated in the first NASA Tweetup from the station with members of the public gathered at

Headquarters in

Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

This involved the first ''live''

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

connection for the astronauts. Previously, astronauts on board the Space Shuttle or ISS have sent the messages they desire to send as tweets down to

Mission Control A mission control center (MCC, sometimes called a flight control center or operations center) is a facility that manages space flights, usually from the point of launch until landing or the end of the mission. It is part of the ground segment ...

which then posted the message via the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

to Twitter.

Expedition 47/48

Williams returned to space station in 2016 as part of

Expedition 47 Expedition 47 was the 47th expedition to the International Space Station. Yuri Malenchenko, Timothy Peake and Timothy Kopra transferred from Expedition 46. Expedition 47 began upon the departure of Soyuz TMA-18M on 2 March 2016 and concluded upo ...

/48. Upon the departure of

Soyuz TMA-19M Soyuz TMA-19M was a 2015 Russian Soyuz spaceflight to the International Space Station. It was launched on December 15, 2015 from Baikonur Cosmodrome, transporting three members of the Expedition 46 crew to the International Space Station. TMA-19 ...

he became commander of Expedition 48. Williams was returned to Earth safely on 6 September 2016. On Expedition 47, Williams surpassed Scott Kelly's record of 520 cumulative days in space which was set when he returned from space on March 1, 2016; Williams beat this record with 534 cumulative days.

Personal life

Williams is a committed Christian. Following his return from the Expedition 21 mission, he wrote the book ''The Work of His Hands: A View Of God's Creation From Space'' about his experience in space. The book reflects in Williams words the "vivid lessons about the meticulous goodness of divine providence, God's care for His creation, and His wisdom in ordering the universe". He is married to Anne-Marie Williams.

Awards and decorations

References

External links

Jeffrey Williams' book ''The Work of His Hands: A View of God's Creation from Space''
* *

Jeff Williams Enters the BEAM Module
{{DEFAULTSORT:Williams, Jeffrey 1958 births Living people Aquanauts United States Army astronauts NASA civilian astronauts Commanders of the International Space Station People from Superior, Wisconsin United States Military Academy alumni United States Army colonels American test pilots Military personnel from Wisconsin Recipients of the Legion of Merit Recipients of the Defense Superior Service Medal Recipients of the NASA Distinguished Service Medal Recipients of the NASA Exceptional Service Medal American Lutherans Space Shuttle program astronauts Recipients of the Meritorious Service Medal (United States) Spacewalkers