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'It is pretty awesome to leave the planet'
December 05 2006
WPhile the mission will last 12 days during which the crew will work to install a new segment of the station's truss and activate the station's permanent, complex power and cooling systems, Williams will remain aboard the station that orbits around the earth at an altitude of 360 km (224 miles), for six months.
"I wish we could all be there together," Williams said minutes after her last robotics training.
Unlike Kalpana Chawla, the first Indian-American woman to go to space and who perished in the 2003 Columbia disaster trying to fulfill her childhood dream of reaching the stars, Sunita Williams never wanted to become a pilot, much less an astronaut.
Williams, the daughter of Deepak and Bonnie Pandya, had hoped to become a veterinarian, but somewhere along the way her ambitions changed. She joined the United States Naval Test Pilot School from where she graduated in 1993. She remembers that her commanding officer started laughing when she said she wanted to be an astronaut.
Image: Astronauts Joan Higginbotham (left), STS-116 mission specialist, and Sunita Williams, attired in training versions of the shuttle launch and entry suit, await the start of an emergency egress training session in the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility at the Johnson Space Center.
Also read: Remembering Kalpana Chawla
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