With Lord Ganesh By Her Side, Indian-Origin Astronaut Sunita Williams Set To Fly Into Space Again

By OB Bureau On May 6, 2024

Ready, Set, Don’t Go, Sunita Williams' 3rd Space Mission Called Off Hours Before Lift-Off — Photo courtest: NASA

New Delhi: Indian-origin astronaut Captain Sunita Williams, is ready to fly into space once again, and this time on a brand-new spacecraft, the Boeing Starliner. The 59-year-old will create history by being the first woman to fly on a maiden mission of a new human-rated spacecraft. While training at the launch pad, Ms Williams said, “When I reach the International Space Station, it will be like going back home.”

The liftoff is scheduled from the Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday at 8.34 8.04 am India time. She says she is a bit nervous but has no jitters about flying in a new spacecraft.

The daughter of Dr Deepak Pandya and Bonnie Pandya, Williams is a qualified navy test pilot. She has flown twice to space in 2006 and 2012, and according to data from NASA, “Sunita has spent a cumulative total of 322 days in space.”

At one time, she used to hold the record for maximum spacewalk time by a female astronaut as she has spent 50 hour sand 40 minutes across seven spacewalks. According to NASA, while on board with seven space walks totalling 50 hours and 40 minutes, Sunita held the record for total cumulative spacewalk time by a female astronaut but that has since been overtaken by Peggy Whitson with 10 spacewalks.

Sunita Williams’s father, Dr Deepak Pandya was a neuroanatomist born in Jhulasan, in Mehsana District, Gujarat, but later migrated to the USA and married Bonnie Pandya, a Slovenian. According to NASA, she is currently preparing to be the pilot of the Crew Flight Test mission aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft – the first crewed flight for that vehicle – and her third mission aboard the International Space Station. She was selected to be an astronaut in 1998, and after the Space Shuttle was retired in 2015, she was chosen to be part of the select group of astronauts who would fly on NASA’s commercial crew program.

Before her flight, Williams had told NDTV that she will carry a statue of Lord Ganesh with her on the commercial crew flight as “Ganesh is her good luck charm” and that she was more spiritual than religious and was happy to have Lord Ganesh with her in outer space. On her earlier flights, she has carried copies of the Bhagavad Gita to space. She also said she loved samosas. She is also a marathon runner and ran a marathon while at the ISS.

NASA selected SpaceX and Boeing to make new spacecraft that would ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station, and SpaceX has been doing this since 2020. The Boeing Starliner has had many delays and is now set for the maiden crewed flight on Tuesday morning, NDTV reported.

Williams will be flying alongside 61-year-old Astronaut Barry Eugene “Butch” Wilmore, a navy test pilot who has flown into space twice. Both veterans will be launching on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket to the International Space Station. The astronauts will spend about a week at the orbiting laboratory before the crew capsule makes a parachute and airbag-assisted landing in the southwestern United States of America, says NASA.

Williams was given the opportunity to name the spacecraft she would fly in, and she named it “Calypso” after the famous ship on which the French oceanographer and legendary filmmaker Jacques-Yves Cousteau explored the oceans when she was still a student. She also has a school named after her, the Sunita Williams Elementary School, in the town of Needham in the USA, and if all goes well, she will interact with school children from aboard the space station.