Junagarh: Residents of Junagarh, a former princely state in British India, are keenly awaiting the maiden space journey of Indian-American woman Sunita Williams.
Sunita's father, Deepak Pandya was a practicing doctor in Junagarh. Sunita has born in 1965 in Ohio, and is now married and lives in Massachusetts.
For local residents and former friends of Sunita's father, it is a proud moment not only for them but also for Junagarh and the entire country as she prepares to follow in the footsteps of Kalpana Chawla, another India-American astronaut.
Chawla died in the ill-fated Columbia space shuttle tragedy in 2003.
"I feel proud of her. We pray that Sunita goes much ahead in life. Sunita's father Deepak Pandya, worked as a doctor here. He too was an honourable man and served the people well," said Bhaskar Upadhyaya, a friend of Sunita's father.
Others said they are waiting anxiously for the forthcoming journey.
"We are very happy because Sunita belonged to Junagarh. She has made the people of Junagarh proud; she has made our community proud. Junagarh is a very small area and it's a matter of great pride that a girl hailing from such a small region is going to space," said Janhavi, a social worker.
NASA selected Sunita in June 1998 for Astronaut Candidate Training.
NASA said Sunita would join Expedition 14 as a flight engineer, after traveling to the station on the space shuttle mission STS-116.
Kalpana Chawla was the first Indian-born crewmember of a US space mission and the second astronaut of Indian birth and origin to undertake such a journey. The first, Rakesh Sharma, flew on a Soviet mission in 1984.
Comments
0 comment