Washington, DC: Sunita Williams, a NASA astronaut, said that she would shortly go to India and meet with the ISRO team. When her spaceship flew across the Himalayas during her lengthy nine-month stay in space, Williams stated at NASA‘s SpaceX Crew-9 Post-Flight News Conference that she always thought India was ‘beautiful.’

“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 are going up on the ISRO mission coming up,” she said.
Ursuline Bonnie Pandya (née Zalokar), Sunita Williams’ mother, is Slovenian-American, while her father, Deepak Pandya, is Gujarati.

Williams expressed her desire to share her space expertise with ISRO and praised India’s initiative in the space industry as a fellow democracy.

“[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.

“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 said.

She joked that the team would be primed with spicy cuisine in response to the question of whether she intended to bring them along on her next trip to India.

“Certainly! You may stand out a little, but that’s alright. We’ll prepare you all with some hot food, and everything will work out OK,” she replied.

When the continents combined to produce the Himalayas, Williams claimed to be able to see how India was formed geographically.

“India is wonderful. Every time we flew over the Himalayas, we captured some breathtaking images of the region. As I have already explained, this wave occurred. Evidently during the plate tectonics and later when it descends into India. “There are a lot of different colors,” she remarked.

Williams discussed the variety of India, which can be seen from space, the Himalayas, an Eastern culture, and the western fishing fleet.

“I believe that when you go from the East to places like Gujarat and Mumbai, the fishing fleet off their coasts serves as a kind of signal indicating we are coming! “All across India,” she said.

The nation, according to Williams, resembled a network of lights, with the brightest cities at the top and lesser ones at the bottom.

“I believe my first thought was that it resembled a network of lights from larger cities that were descending through smaller ones. Both during the day and at night, it was just amazing to see. The Himalayas, which are an amazing front line descending into India, are the obvious highlight, she remarked.

Astronauts aboard NASA Crew 9 On March 19, SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft successfully splashed down, allowing Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, Nick Hague, Butch Wilmore, and Sunita Williams to breathe terrestrial air for the first time in more than nine months.

Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams were in space for nine months instead of a week due to delays brought on by problems with Boeing’s Starliner spaceship, which were revealed on a test voyage last summer, CNN said.

ISRO said at the time that it hoped to work with Williams on the next space missions.

“When Bharat, under the leadership of Hon’ble PM Modi ji, is working towards making India a developed country, we wish to utilize your expertise in space exploration,” stated the statement.