Sunita excited about maiden spacewalk

Indian-American Sunita Williams will make her debut spacewalk along with veteran astronaut Robert Curbeam in the early hours of Sunday as the two will try to complete the crucial task of rewiring the International Space Station and fix its solar array.

41-year-old Sunita, who became the second woman of Indian descent to venture into space after Kalpan Chawla, said she was all "excited" to go out and check the planet.

"It should be pretty nice. It is a great opportunity. Hopefully, it will go just the same and we'll be just as good," a smiling Sunita, dressed in a red tee shirt and blue trousers with her loose hair flowing uncontrollably upwards in the zero gravity of the space station, told reporters from the space lab where she joined the Expedition 14 crew.

Spacewalking astronauts rewired half of the orbiting lab on Thursday, and Sunita and Curbeam will try to complete the task. If they have time, they will try to fix the solar array which is part of the space station's temporary power system.

Aware of the excitement she has generated among Indians, Sunita, who has brought with her a copy of the Bhagavad Gita, a small statue of Lord Ganesh and a letter written in Hindi by her father, said she wanted the people of India to dream like her, for "if you belive in it, it will come true."

Sunita, who will remain aboard the ISS for another six months, said, "It's just a nice place to live."

The spacewalk, scheduled to begin at 1:37 pm US time today (0107 IST Sunday), is the last scheduled mission aboard Discovery.