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.
