- Wednesday, April 02, 2025
Sunita and fellow astronaut Butch Wilmore addressed their first joint press conference in New York after returning to Earth on March 18
By: India Weekly
NASA astronaut Sunita Williams said India looks amazing from space and she hope to visit her “father’s home country” and share experiences about space exploration with people there.
The 59-year-old made these remarks during a press conference in New York on Monday (31).
She was responding to a question on how India looked from space when she was in the International Space Station and on possibility of her collaborating with Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on space exploration.
“India is amazing. Every time we went over the Himalayas, and I’ll tell you, Butch got some incredible pictures of the Himalayas. Just amazing,” Sunita said.
Sunita and fellow astronaut Butch Wilmore addressed their first joint press conference days after returning to Earth after being stranded in space for over nine months.
“And you can see, like I’ve described it before, just like this ripple that happened, obviously when the plates collided, and then as it flows down into India. It’s many, many colours,” she said.
“I think, when you come from the east, going into like Gujarat and Mumbai, the fishing fleet that’s off the coast there gives you a little bit of a beacon that here we come, and then all throughout India, I think the impression I had was it was just like this network of lights from the bigger cities going down through the smaller cities.
“Just incredible to look at night as well as during the day, highlighted, of course, by the Himalayas, which is just incredible as a forefront going down into India,” she said.
Sunita added that “I hope, and I think for sure, I’m gonna be going back to my father’s home country and visiting with people and getting excited about the first, or not the first, but the Indian national who’s going up on the Axiom Mission coming up, pretty awesome,” she said.
She made those remarks while referring to the Axiom Mission 4 (Ax-4) commercial astronaut mission to the International Space Station that will include Mission Pilot Shubhanshu Shukla of India.
Lucknow-born Shukla will be India’s second astronaut after former Indian Air Force officer Rakesh Sharma to go to space since 1984.
Sunita’s father Deepak Pandya hailed from Gujarat and came to the US in 1958 where he did his internship and residency training in Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio.
She was born in Ohio to Deepak and Ursuline Bonnie Pandya.
When Wilmore asked Sunita if she plans to take her crew members on the trip to India with her, she replied with a laugh “Absolutely. You might stick out a little bit but that’s okay. We’ll get you all primed with some spicy food, will be good.”
Sunita and Wilmore, along with Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov returned to Earth on March 18 onboard SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft.
After initial departure aboard the Starliner last June for an eight-day mission, Sunita and Wilmore saw their stay on the International Space Station (ISS) extended as a result of malfunctions that were detected on the Boeing spacecraft.
The technical problems prompted NASA to entrust the return of their astronauts to Elon Musk’s SpaceX, snubbing Boeing.
Reaffirm faith in Boeing Starliner
However, the two astronauts confirmed that they’re ready to blast off again aboard a Boeing Starliner, the very spacecraft that could not return them to Earth.
“Yes, because we’re gonna rectify all the issues that we encountered. We’re gonna fix it. We’re gonna make it work,” said Wilmore.
Williams, who co-led the test flight of the Boeing spacecraft agreed, saying “the spacecraft is really capable.”
“There were a couple things that need to be fixed, like Butch mentioned, and folks are actively working on that, but it’s, it is a great spacecraft, and it has a lot of capability that other spacecraft don’t have,” said Williams.
“We are all responsible” for the problems encountered during the Starliner’s inaugural manned flight, Wilmore insisted, saying he prefers to look forward.
While the stranded astronauts earned a great deal of public interest, the incident also drew political attention with US president Donald Trump accusing his predecessor Joe Biden of deliberately “abandoning” the astronauts, while pledging to rescue them.
Without revisiting the political controversy, the astronauts reiterated Monday that they had been prepared for the unexpected delay in their return.
“I’m very thankful that people are paying attention,” Williams said. “There’s some lessons learned to it, and part of that is just resilience and being able to take a turn that was unexpected and make the best of it.”
NASA and Boeing plan to ground-test Starliner’s propulsion system this summer and expect to fly the spacecraft again in early 2026 in a test flight that agency officials have suggested could be uncrewed, before it flies humans again.
That would be Boeing’s third uncrewed test in a bumpy development programme that has cost the company more than $2 billion since 2016. (Agencies)
