President A P J Abdul Kalam, Vice President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today congratulated Indian-American astronaut Sunita Williams who returned back to earth in the wee hours of Saturday after creating a new space record by spending more than six months aboard the international space station.
New Delhi, June 23 : President A P J Abdul Kalam, Vice President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today congratulated Indian-American astronaut Sunita Williams who returned back to earth in the wee hours of Saturday after creating a new space record by spending more than six months aboard the international space station.
Kalam greeted Williams on her successful landing of the space shuttle Atlantis at the Edwards Air Force Base in California after a successful completion of her mission.
The space shuttle touched down at 1.19 am (IST) on Saturday, after the earlier three attempts at landing were aborted due to bad weather.
Sunita lived on the International Space Station (ISS) for six months. She accumulated 194 days, 18 hours and 58 minutes during her space flight.
Sunita's relatives back in Ahmedabad have wished her a prosperous life.
Sunita's father Vijay Pandya in New Jersey is also a proud man and is looking forward to meeting his daughter soon.
"I have no words to express my joy and happiness. In our family it was Pandya and now Sunita. I am so happy that I do not have words to express," said Chaya Pandya, Sunita's cousin sister.
Sunita began her spaceflight in December, 2006 on space shuttle Discovery when she travelled to the ISS. During her stay at the space station, she set the record for the longest-duration single spaceflight by a woman on June 16. She passed the previous record of 188 days, 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