The students at Harlan Christian School had the privilege of having Colonel Jeffrey N. Williams (U.S. Army, Ret.) speak to them about his experiences as an astronaut for NASA. Colonel Williams currently holds the American record for most days spent in space of 534 days.
During his time working in space, Williams has seen the International Space Station (ISS) grow from a single, crew-less module to the continuously-manned orbiting laboratory that it is today. His first mission was aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis back in 2000, where he worked to prepare the space station for its first crew, spending just 10 days in space. He returned in 2006 and spent six months there, setting up experiments and replacing equipment. He orbited the earth more than 2,800 times. He worked on hundreds of experiments while suspended in microgravity. He walked in space twice spending more than twelve hours hanging by a tether in the atmospheric void outside the spacecraft. In 2009, Williams commanded the station for the first time, overseeing the arrival of, among other things, the famous cupola. On his most recent mission, the station had officially been declared complete, but Williams still found work to do, adding a docking adapter and helping to deploy a new module.
Williams has taken more photographs of earth than any astronaut in history.
