Nasa astronaut Sunita Williams plans to visit India soon and meet ISRO‘s team in her father’s homeland.
“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 during Nasa’s SpaceX Crew-9 Post-Flight news conference.
On March 19, Nasa Crew-9 astronauts Sunita Williams, Nick Hague, Butch Wilmore, and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov returned to Earth after more than nine months.
Technical issues with Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, discovered during a test flight with Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams last June, extended their space stay in the International Space Station (ISS) from one week to nine months.
In the conference, Williams expressed enthusiasm about sharing her space experiences with ISRO and commended India’s advancement in the space sector as a democratic nation.
“[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.
Williams also praised India as a “great country” and called it a “wonderful democracy.”
“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 questioned about bringing her crew to India, she responded positively with a light-hearted comment about preparing them for spicy cuisine.
“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.
How India looks from space: Sunita Williams shares her experience
After returning to Earth, Williams shared her observations of India from space, noting it as ‘amazing’ whenever her spacecraft passed over the Himalayas.
Williams described her observations of India’s geological formation, noting the collision that created the Himalayas and its subsequent effect on the subcontinent.
“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 colors,” she said.
She highlighted India’s diverse landscape visible from space, from the Himalayas to the distinct cultures from East to West, including the fishing fleet near Gujarat and Mumbai.
“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! All throughout India,” she said.
Williams said India looks like a web of lights at night, with major cities shining the brightest.
“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. [It was] 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,” she said.
