After working aboard the International Space Station since December, Expedition 15 Flight Engineer Suni Williams will come back to Earth aboard the space shuttle Atlantis, targeted for launch June 8. That shuttle mission, STS-117, will carry her successor, astronaut Clay Anderson, to the station to begin his duty as an Expedition 15 flight engineer.
The exchange of Anderson and Williams was originally planned for the STS-118 mission, now targeted for launch in August. However, that flight, first set to fly in June, had to be postponed after an unexpected hail storm damaged Atlantis' external fuel tank and delayed STS-117.
With the new plan, Williams' mission on the station will be approximately the same length as originally anticipated. She launched to the station on Dec. 9, 2006, with the STS-116 crew on space shuttle Discovery and joined the station's Expedition 14 crew.
Williams later became a member of the Expedition 15 crew, joining Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and Flight Engineer Oleg Kotov who arrived at the orbital complex on April 9.
Williams' former crewmates, Expedition 14 Commander Michael Lopez-Alegria and Flight Engineer Mikhail Tyurin, returned to Earth along with spaceflight participant Charles Simonyi aboard their Soyuz TMA-9 spacecraft on April 21.
