BENGALURU: In the first press conference since her and Butch Wilmore’s return from the International Space Station (ISS), Nasa astronaut Sunita Williams shared her vivid descriptions of viewing India from ISS, expressing particular wonder at the majestic Himalayan mountain range.
“India is amazing… Every time we went over the Himalayas,” Williams enthused. “Butch got incredible pictures of the Himalayas—just amazing. You can see what I’ve described before as this ripple that happened obviously when the plates collided.”
Williams, who has Indian heritage through her father, painted a colorful picture of the landscape as it “flows down [from himalayas] into India” with its “many, many colors.” She highlighted the distinctive fishing fleet off Mumbai’s coast that served as “a little bit of a beacon” announcing their approach to the subcontinent.
The veteran astronaut was equally impressed by India’s nocturnal beauty, describing “the network of lights from the bigger cities going to the smaller cities” as “incredible to look at night as well as during the day.”
India’s own hero
Looking ahead, Williams expressed enthusiasm about returning to her “father’s home country” and meeting with the Indian astronaut scheduled for the upcoming Axiom mission. “They will have a hometown hero there of their own who will be able to talk about how wonderful the International Space Station is from his perspective,” she noted.
She was referring to the Indian going to ISS through the Isro-Nasa joint effort. As on date, India’s Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla is scheduled to go to ISS on Axiom Space’s Axiom-4 mission (Ax-4) later this year, while his backup Group Captain Prashanth Nair, is also training with him as part of the mission preparations.
Williams hopes to eventually share her experiences with “as many people in India as possible,” calling it “a great country” and “another wonderful democracy that is trying to put their foot in space.” She added, “We’d love to be a part of that and help them along.”
As India prepares for its own human spaceflight mission, Gaganyaan, Sunita’s response to how India looks from space, brings back memories of Wing Commander (retd) Rakesh Sharma’s response in 1984. Sharma had invoked poet Muhammed Iqbal’s “Saare Jahaan Se Accha”.
