Jeffrey Williams (astronaut)

Jeffrey Nels Williams (born January 18, 1958) is a retired United States Army officer and a NASA astronaut. He is a veteran of three space flights.

Early life and education
Williams was born in Superior, Wisconsin, and raised in Winter, Wisconsin. As a child, Williams was a Star Scout in the Boy Scouts of America. During the Jamboree on the Air in October 2009 he communicated with Boy Scouts in the National Scouting Museum in Texas from the International Space Station. Williams graduated from Winter High School in Winter, Wisconsin, in 1976. He earned an engineering degree from the U.S. Military Academy in 1980, receiving his commission in the United States Army. Williams served with the Army at Johnson Space Center from 1987 to 1992 before training as a test pilot. In 1996, he was selected by NASA as an astronaut candidate and flew as a mission specialist and flight engineer aboard STS-101 in 2000.

NASA career
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. During his six-month stint at the International Space Station in 2006, Williams orbited the Earth more than 2,800 times. During Expedition 13, 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.

Williams also served as a Flight Engineer for Expedition 21 and assumed command of Expedition 22 in November 2009 having arrived on the International Space Station with his crew mates via Soyuz TMA-16 which launched on September 30, 2009. Williams with Expedition 22 Flight Engineer Maksim Surayev landed their Soyuz TMA-16 spacecraft on the steppes of Kazakhstan on March 18, 2010, wrapping up a 167-day stay aboard the Space Station.

His total time in space of 362 days currently places him fourth on the all-time U.S. list of long-duration space travelers. Michael Fincke, who has spent 382 days in space, tops that list.

Williams also flew aboard the Soyuz TMA-8 mission, replacing Expedition 12 astronaut William S. McArthur. He was previously in orbit as the Expedition 13 Flight Engineer and Science Officer aboard the International Space Station. He returned to Earth on September 29, 2006.

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 under development to replace the Space Shuttle after 2010 would be named Orion after the famed wintertime constellation.

First live tweetup from space
On October 21, 2009, Jeff Williams and his Expedition 21 crewmate, Nicole Stott, participated in the first NASA Tweetup from the station with members of the public gathered at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. This involved the first live Twitter 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 which then posted the message via the Internet to Twitter.