Sunita Williams is all set to return home on June 19, 2007

Indian American astronaut, Sunita "Suni" Williams, the first woman to be in space for six months, is all set to return home on June 19, 2007 as shuttle Atlantis gears up to fly on Friday ( Saturday in India) on an 11-day mission to the International Space Station (ISS).



Sunita Williams became the second woman of Indian origin after Kalpana Chawla to blast off on a space mission and spend six months at the International Space Station.

Sunita, who is 41 years old, went up to the space station aboard Discovery, taking German astronaut Thomas Reiter's place as part of the three-person crew at the space lab.


Sunita was expected to take a spacewalk with her Discovery colleague Robert Curbeam to help rewire the ISS space lab and also operate the space station's robotic arm, among other tasks. In two spacewalks the astronauts would rewire the orbiting station, replacing its eight-year-old temporary power cable system with a permanent one, made possible after the previous mission in September installed two huge electricity- generating solar array panels on the ISS.

NASA’s latest shuttle Discovery's seven astronauts were among the most culturally diverse of any space shuttle crew. There were two African-Americans, an astronaut of Indian descent, the soon-to-be first Swede in space, a British-born mission specialist, an Alaskan and a Jersey Boy.

"I am half Indian and I have got, a group of Indian people who are looking forward to seeing this second person of Indian origin, flying up in space," she said in a pre-flight interview released by NASA

A graduate of the US Naval Academy, Sunita has claimed never to have thought about becoming an astronaut till a chance meeting with veteran astronaut John Young made her look to the stars. "I just can't wait to get to my new home," she said. "I have always wanted to fly a long-duration mission," Sunita said. "A long-duration spaceflight will supply answers... to what happens to the human body, how materials work in space."

Astronaut Kalpana Chawla, who perished in the Columbia crash, was a friend of Sunita. The two often went bike riding and hiking together, according to Sunita. Unlike Chawla, who was born in Karnal in Haryana, Sunita was born and brought up in the US. Born in Ohio to Deepak Pandya, a physician who migrated to the US and Ursaline Pandya, she grew up in Massachusetts.

Besides the best wishes of Indians across the globe, Sunita had carried samosas with her in a special container

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