1 day Ago By Surendra Singh
NEW DELHI: Indian-origin Nasa astronaut Sunita Williams on returning to Earth after her 286-day-long stay at the International Space Station (ISS) has said that “India is amazing” from space and that she is willing to visit her “father’s home country” soon. The 59-year-old Nasa astronaut and fellow astronaut Butch Wilmore, who were stranded in space for over nine months due to a technical issue with Boeing Starliner spacecraft, addressed the media in the US at their first joint press conference days after they returned to Earth as part of the SpaceX Crew-9 mission. Describing how India looked from space, the PIO astronaut said, “I think, when you come from the east, going into like Gujarat and Mumbai, the fishing fleet that's off the coast there gives you a little bit of a beacon that here we come, and then all throughout India, I think the impression I had was it was just like this network of lights from the bigger cities going down through the smaller cities.
Just incredible to look at night as well as during the day, highlighted, of course, by the Himalayas, which is just incredible as a forefront going down into India.” “Every time we went over the Himalayas, and I'll tell you, Butch got some incredible pictures of the Himalayas. Just amazing,” Williams said.
William's praise for India brought back the memories of Sqn Ldr Rakesh Sharma, who had told the then Indian PM Indira Gandhi from space in 1984 that the country from space looks like “Sare jahan se achcha”. The view of India from space felt like a personal connection to Williams’s heritage. “I have described it before like this ripple that happened when the plates collided, and then, as it flows down into India, it is many-many colours,” she explained.
Expressing happiness at Indian astronaut Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla going to the ISS under Axiom Mission 4 (Ax-4), Williams said, “I'm gonna be going back to my father's home country and visiting with people and getting excited about the first, or not the first, but the Indian national who's going up on the Axiom Mission coming up, pretty awesome.” Williams's father Deepak Pandya hailed from Gujarat and came to the US in 1958 where he did his internship and residency training in Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio. She was born in Ohio to Deepak and Ursuline Bonnie Pandya.
On Shukla, she said, “They'll have a hometown hero there of their own who will be able to talk about how wonderful the International Space Station is from his perspective. But I hope I can meet up at some point in time. 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 space.
.. We'd love to be part of that and help them along.
” Lucknow-born Shukla will be India's second astronaut to go to space after former IAF officer Rakesh Sharma, who flew aboard Soyuz T-11 on April 3, 1984 as part of the Soviet Interkosmos programme. It is likely that she will meet PM Modi when she visits India in the near future. PM Modi had welcomed Williams and her fellow Crew-9 members when they returned to Earth after the prolonged mission to the ISS, saying their unwavering determination will forever inspire millions.
“Welcome back, Crew9! The Earth missed you,” Modi had then posted on X. Williams joked about taking space crew members on a trip to India. “You might stick out a little bit.
That is okay. We will get you all primed with some spicy food,” she said with a laugh. When asked if he would fly again aboard the Starliner that faced a technical issue in space and had to return to Earth without them, Wilmore said, “Yes, because we're going to rectify all the issues that we encountered.
We're going to fix them. We're going to make it work. Boeing is completely committed.
Nasa is completely committed, and with that, I'd get on in a heartbeat.".
