New York: India is amazing from space, NASA astronaut Sunita Williams said and voiced optimism that she will visit her “father’s home country” and share experiences about space exploration with people there.
Sunita made these remarks during a press conference on Monday. She was responding to a question on how India looked from space when she was in the International Space Station and on the possibility of her collaborating with Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on space exploration.
“India is amazing. Every time we went over the Himalayas, and I’ll tell you, Butch got some incredible pictures of the Himalayas. Just amazing,” Sunita said.
On her plans to visit her father’s home country, she said, “India is a wonderful democracy, a great country.” Sunita Williams also lauded India’s space program and said that she hopes to meet Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla, who is part of the Gaganyaan mission and will be flying into space on another private space program – Axiom-4 soon.
Shubhanshu Shukla, who is also one of the four astronaut-designates selected for India’s Gaganyaan mission, will become the first Indian astronaut to go to the ISS and the first Indian to go to space in the last 40 years. The mission to the ISS will be launched from the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida in 2025, and the mission crew will spend 14 days on board the space station. He said earlier, “Axiom-4 mission is very important for India, and it comes at a very opportune time. I am confident that the lessons learnt during the Axiom-4 mission are going to prove invaluable for our journey back home.”
On the Gaganyaan mission, Sunita Williams said, “I hope I could meet up with them at some point in time and we can share our experiences.”
Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore were in the space for 278 days after the Starliner’s thruster malfunctioned although the NASA astronauts said they never felt that they were stuck in space.
