{"id":6366,"date":"2007-10-23T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2007-10-23T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2007\/10\/23\/astronaut-sunita-williams-talks-about-life-in-space\/"},"modified":"2007-10-23T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2007-10-23T12:00:00","slug":"astronaut-sunita-williams-talks-about-life-in-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2007\/10\/23\/astronaut-sunita-williams-talks-about-life-in-space\/","title":{"rendered":"Astronaut Sunita Williams Talks About Life in Space"},"content":{"rendered":"

www.indiatoday.com<\/a><\/p>\n

DELHI, INDIA, October 15, 2007: “Up in space, the Gita and Ganesha were what kept me grounded. They put life in perspective,” says Sunita Williams in her India Today interview. In a country that believes that beauty trophies are a genetic right, they are calling her the true Miss Universe. But when she strides into the room with her deep blue space overalls, dark sports shoes, a haversack slung across her broad shoulders and her lined face devoid of make-up, it is apparent she makes no effort to be the role model for models. Williams even modesty flicks away the crown saying: “I think a citizen of the universe is a lot better than a ‘Miss.’ I have been trying to get across to people who haven’t been up in space that we are citizens of a bigger place than just our planet.”<\/p>\n

There is not, however, another woman on earth who has achieved quite what Sunita Williams has in the past year. As a female astronaut, she holds the record for the longest space flight (195 days), the highest number of spacewalks (four) and the maximum time spent on spacewalks (29 hours and 17 minutes). On her first visit to India after her record breaking space odyssey, Williams, whose father, Deepak Pandya originally hailed from Gujarat, wowed audiences across the country with details of her experiences at the International Space Station (ISS).<\/p>\n

Williams’s experience in space has radically altered her perspective of life. From 350 km in orbit, the earth appears a magnificently beautiful whole. She says: “It is hard to imagine people arguing down there, not to mention fighting. It looks so peaceful…so calm down on earth. From space, there are no borders that you can see. We are lucky to live on such a planet and we should not take it for granted. After my space experience, I am a lot more tolerant of people and opinions, of everything.”<\/p>\n

ISS is an outstanding example of how nations can collaborate in space. Led by the U.S., the space station draws upon the scientific and technological resources of 16 nations. Williams says her defining moment came when the international crew was being changed and she found herself the most experienced on board. She says: “It was like ‘wow, we represent the Earth.’ All of a sudden, I felt responsible.”<\/p>\n

Williams is not the first person of Indian origin to ride into space. There was Kallpana Chawla who tragically died while returning from her second space flight in 2003 when the space shuttle Columbia blew up. Earlier there was Rakesh Sharma, India’s first cosmonaut, who hitched a ride on a Russian Salyut 7 spacecraft in 1984 and orbited the earth for eight days. Not to mention the more than 460 men and women who have journeyed into space after Yuri Gargarin made the historic flight in 1961. <\/p>\n

Williams took with her into space a statue of Lord Ganesha and a copy of the Bhagavad Gita for company. She had never read the Gita with any depth before her space journey though her father had narrated to her the epics–the Ramayan and the Mahabharat–when she was young. She says: “This may sound a bit corny, but it sort of grounds you. In a little spacecraft zipping around the earth, you are doing a lot of things, sometimes it feels like work…maybe you are taking for granted where you are, what you are doing…things like Ganesha, the Gita bring you back home. It is nice to read about Arjuna’s trials and tribulations and it puts your life in perspective.”<\/p>\n

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