From rxpgnews.com

India Diaspora
India looks beautiful from space: Sunita Williams
Jan 10, 2007 - 11:34:12 PM

New Delhi, Jan 10 - India looks beautiful from space, Indian American astronaut Sunita Williams, part of the crew aboard International Space Station -, said Wednesday in a chat.

Speaking to about 60 Indian students, teachers and media persons and Rakesh Sharma, the first Indian to walk in space, Williams was all praise for India.

'I have the opportunity to look at India a number of times from the spacecraft and it looks beautiful,' she said during a 10-odd-minute chat over satellite phone connected to the American Center here.

'It's a colourful country. Greenery and red mountains were great,' a seemingly anxious Williams added.

Thrilled at the Indian space scientists' 'textbook' launch Wednesday of four satellites from an indigenous launch vehicle for the first time, she said: 'Congratulations. It's a great achievement.'

Williams, a graduate of the US Naval Academy, is one of the only six women NASA has put in space since 1965. Her father is an Indian-born doctor and her mother a homemaker of the Yugoslav descent.

When ejected to the vacuum Dec 10 from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida, Williams had taken along with her a copy of the Bhagavad Gita, a small idol of Lord Ganesh and a letter written in Hindi by her father Deepak Pandya - besides some samosas in a special container.



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