Sunita Williams to visit India in September

Indian-American astronaut Sunita Williams, who returned back to earth last month after creating a new space record by spending more than six months aboard the international space station, is expected to visit India in September.Interacting with Indian fans through a live video news conference on Friday evening, Sunita said she plans to visit India in September for the Astronautical Congress in Bangalore.

New Delhi, July 21 : Indian-American astronaut Sunita Williams, who returned back to earth last month after creating a new space record by spending more than six months aboard the international space station, is expected to visit India in September.Interacting with Indian fans through a live video news conference on Friday evening, Sunita said she plans to visit India in September for the Astronautical Congress in Bangalore.

"There is a group of us who are coming from NASA for the conference in Bangalore. I am really looking forward to it. I'll be visiting my family there and some friends in New Delhi. I hope to do as much as I can to thank the people of India for all support while I was in space," she said.

Journalists and scientists from Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata and New Delhi participated in the video conference.

Williams also said that she draws spiritual strength strongly from Hindu religion, and added that she took a copy of the Bhagavad Gita and a Ganesha idol to the International Space Station (ISS).

"I have enough appreciation of the Hindu religion. I like Ganesha because he is a symbol of happiness, prosperity and success. It was just appropriate to bring the Bhagavad Gita to explore a little more of the text while I was up there," said Williams.

When asked whom she missed the most during her long stay in space, Sunita laughed and replied, that it was her husband Micael J. Williams and their pet dogorby, a Jack Russell terrier breed.

The NASA-based astronaut, whose father Deepak Pandya is an Indian immigrant, and mother Bonnie, a Slovenian, returned to Earth on June 22 after being in space for six month.

Sunita set the record for the longest-duration single spaceflight by a woman on June 16. She passed the previous record of 188 days, and four hours set by Shannon Lucid on a mission to the Russian space station Mir in 1996.

Although this is only her first spaceflight, Sunita became the world's most experienced woman walker in space on February 4 with four excursions clocking over 29 hours, 17 minutes to top Kathy Thornton's 21-hour space walking record.

ANI