‘I weigh the same’: NASA astronaut Suni Williams rejects tabloid health claims (video)

On November 13, 2024By Littum

Don’t believe the tabloids: NASA astronaut Suni Williams says she’s fine aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

Last week, media such as Daily Mail and New York Post published stories speculating that Williams’ health may be deteriorating in Earth orbit, citing an outside doctor’s opinion that she looks “skinny” in some recent photos.

NASA officials quickly refuted those claims, saying Williams and the three other agency astronauts currently living on the ISS are in good health. And now Williams himself has delivered the same message.

a woman in a blue shirt and khaki pants holds a microphone aboard the International Space Station — NASA astronaut Suni Williams gives a video interview from the International Space Station on November 12, 2024. (Image credit: NASA)

“I’m the same weight I was when I came up here,” Williams said today (Nov. 12) in a video interview from ISS, in response to a question from the New England Sports Network.

Related: Astronaut Suni Williams ‘in good health’ on ISS, NASA says, rejecting tabloid claims

Williams said she has been training hard in the orbiting lab, as all astronauts do, to stave off the muscle wasting and loss of bone density that can come with long-term exposure to microgravity.

She has ridden an exercise bike, run on a treadmill and lifted weights on the ISS, and her body has changed as a result.

“I could definitely feel that lifting weights, which is not something I do all the time, has definitely changed me. My thighs are a little bit bigger, my butt is a little bit bigger,” Williams said.

But she stressed: “I weigh the same.”

Williams arrived at the ISS on June 6, along with fellow NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore, on the first-ever crewed mission of Boeing’s Starliner capsule.

That mission, known as the Crew Flight Test (CFT), was supposed to last only 10 days or so. However, the Starliner experienced thruster problems en route to the orbiting laboratory. NASA extended the CFT to study the problem in detail and ultimately decided to bring the Starliner home without anyone on board, which happened on September 6.

Williams and Wilmore will return to Earth in February 2025 with the two astronauts from SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission, which arrived in late September.

Williams leads the orbital laboratory’s Expedition 72. The other members of the mission currently residing on the ISS are Wilmore, fellow NASA astronauts Don Pettit and Nick Hague, and Russian cosmonauts Aleksandr Gorbunov, Aleksey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner.