HOUSTON: Record-setting Indian-American astronaut Sunita Williams has completed 100 days in space and is not missing gravity as she loves floating around, an experience she calls “priceless”.
“I love being up here and I love floating around,” 47-year-old Williams, who is currently commanding the International Space Station’s Expedition 33 crew, said.
“I think the mindset really is you know it is not going to last forever, so I think you take an advantage of flying around as much as possible,” said Williams, who is in space along with Flight Engineers Yuri Malenchekno of Russia and Akihiko Hoshide of Japan.
Sometimes her mindset reverts, however, to how she’d do things on Earth. “It took a little while to get used to falling asleep without laying down on a bed or having a pillow,” Williams shared.
“Still, every now and then, you take a bag of nuts and go like this, holding it up in the air to have them fall in your mouth, and that’s not going to work.”
Some of those small unconscious things catch you off guard but being in micro-gravity and flying around in space is priceless, Williams said. “I think we’re cherishing every moment we have of it.”
“There is nothing like home anywhere, there’s no place like home, even in space,” Williams said.
The International Space Station has become her home.
“It’s definitely our home at this point in time,” Williams said in a televised interview from aboard the Station.
“We have our little things scattered here and there and we know where they are. I think we need to clean up before the next crew comes here,” she said while floating inside the “Destiny” US laboratory module.
Williams is the space station’s 33rd commander and only the second woman to lead the outpost since the first crew took up residency on the outpost in 2000. -PTI
Floating around in space ‘priceless’: Sunita Williams
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