Oldest Female Astronaut Boards ISS

NASA's Peggy Whitson arrived at the International Space Station over the weekend. At the age of 56, she is now the oldest woman to have ever boarded the spacecraft. She is going to celebrate her 57th birthday in February.

This is not the first time she boarded the ISS, though. As NPR.org pointed out, this is her third mission in space -- and she is set to become its commander for the second time. All in all, she has already spent more than a year of her life watching the Earth from above.

Whitson is expected to land back in the spring of 2017, and by then, she is expected to have amassed more time in orbit that the current record-holder, Jeff Williams, who, in September marked a total of 534 days in space. However, to defeat Williams's record, Whitson should have her Soyuz MS-03 craft stay in space until May -- and a previous NASA release placed her return date for late April.

According to NASA, Whitson is an Iowa native who already completed two six-month tours of duty aboard the station: first for Expedition 5 in 2002 and the next as a station commander for Expedition 16 in 2008. During this time, she accumulated 377 days in space -- the most of any U.S. woman. She also performed six spacewalks that totaled 39 hours and 46 minutes.

Accompanying Whitson on the mission are French astronaut Thomas Pesquet and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy. This is Pesquet's first spaceflight, and Novitskiy's second.

Pesquet, however, has another mission in mind. Before leaving, he told reporters, as cited by Boston Globe that he is taking up a piece of Mars meteorite with him. This is to illustrate the union that is necessary between human and robotic explorers. He intends to bring the stone back to Earth, then launch it aboard a Mars rover to return it to its home planet.

Pasquet shared, "It's going to be the most experienced space traveler there is in the world.''