NASA astronaut Sunita Williams, in her first interview since her return to Earth after her 278-day stay at the International Space Station, revealed that she plans to visit India soon and meet with ISRO’s team during her visit.
“I hope and I think for sure I’m going to be going back to my father’s home country and visiting with people and getting excited about the Indian astronauts who’s going up on the ISRO mission coming up,” she said.
Sunita Williams’ mother, Ursuline Bonnie Pandya (nee Zalokar), is of Slovenian-American descent, while her father, Deepak Pandya, is from Gujarat.
The astronaut also said that she found India to be “amazing” each time her spacecraft passed by the Himalayas during her extended stay at the ISS.
On her plans to meet ISRO team during her India visit, Williams said that she would be happy to share her experience with them and lauded India’s efforts in the space sector.
“[It’s] pretty awesome- they’ll have a hometown hero there of their own that will be able to talk about how wonderful the International Space Station is from his perspective,” she said.
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“I hope I can meet up at some point in time and we can share our experiences with as many people in India as possible because it’s a great country, another wonderful democracy that’s trying to put its foot in the space countries and I would love to be part of that and help them along,” she added.
When asked if she would like to take her SpaceX-Crew 9 along with her to the India trip, she responded in the affirmative, adding that the crew would be primed with spicy food. “Absolutely! You might stick out a little bit but that’s okay- we we’ll get you all primed with some spicy food we’ll be good,” she said.
Sunita Williams Says India Looked ‘Amazing’ From Space
The NASA astronaut said that India looked “amazing” and how she could see the country’s geographical formation when the landmass collided to form the Himalayas.
“India is amazing. Every time we went over the Himalayas- we got some incredible pictures of the Himalayas- so just amazing. Like I’ve described it before just like this ripple that happened. Obviously when the plates collided and then as it flows down into India. It’s many, many colours,” she said.
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