Government to finance ten scholarships to promote outer space study

The Central Government will finance ten scholarships, five for girls and five for boys, to promote study of outer space, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said here today.

New Delhi, Oct 1 : The Central Government will finance ten scholarships, five for girls and five for boys, to promote study of outer space, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said here today.

Singh told this to Indian-origin American astronaut Sunita Williams, when she met him and his wife Gursharan Kaur.

Singh said India is truly proud of William's achievements and that she is a source of inspiration for all our young people.

The scholarships will be called the Sunita Williams Scholarships for Higher Education in Space (SWISHES), he said.

Williams said that she was overwhelmed by the love and affection she received in India and by the interest of young Indians in aeronautics and space exploration.

Earlier in the day, Williams met a group of students at the American Center here and shared her space travel experiences with them.

Williams said exploring space and having different views of planet earth would help to bring different sciences to earth.

Speaking about her motive behind becoming an astronaut, Williams said: "This is the next style in exploration and also the next step in trying to figure out what is going on planet earth. Maybe, by working on different processes and by different sciences that we can bring to earth and use here (we can further explore). I thought that was good. So, that was my main motive."

Williams arrived in New Delhi on September 29 from Hyderabad after attending the concluding session of the 58th International Astronautical Congress. She had met Congress President Sonia Gandhi the same evening.

She is expected to meet several prominent personalities during her stay in Delhi till October 4.

Williams, who is on her first visit to India after her successful expedition aboard space shuttle "Discovery", was conferred with Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Vishwa Pratibha Award by World Gujarati Society on September 22.

Williams is the first non-resident to receive the award. She was presented with the award by Gujarat Governor Naval Kishore Sharma.

Her last visit to India took place in 1998, when she accompanied an urn believed to contain the ashes of India-born astronaut Kalpana Chawla.

ANI