Sunita Williams, a NASA astronaut, is getting ready for her eagerly anticipated return to Earth as the SpaceX Crew-10 mission prepares to launch to the ISS on Wednesday.
This historic moment holds special significance for the whole world, especially Indian, as she is another Indian origin astronaut who has left an illustrious legacy in space exploration after Kalpana Chawla.
Chawla was the first Indian-born woman astronaut to reach space in 1997, achieving a lifetime aspiration.
After being selected as a NASA astronaut in 1998, Sunita Williams went on to complete several space missions, including the most recent Boeing Starliner voyage on June 5, 2024, which docked at the International Space Station (ISS) the following day.
Sunita Williams was chosen to be a NASA astronaut in 1998, and she went on to fly on several space missions, including the Boeing Starliner voyage on June 5, 2024, which landed at the ISS the next day.
While their space missions were different, Chawla and Williams shared striking similarities when it was about Indian food.
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Unravelling Sunita Williams and Kalpana Chawla’s shared love for ‘Samosas’
In addition to their careers in space exploration, Williams and Chawla shared a love for samosas, one of the most popular Indian snacks.
Williams, who openly acknowledged her passion for Indian food after coming back home from her first space trip in 2006, carried samosas on board the ISS. “Indian food! You can never get enough of Indian food… I had to make sure I had samosas in space with me. Other types of Indian food we definitely had up there as well.”
However, Chawla took a different approach. She decided not to take samosas to space. Her husband, Jean-Pierre Harrison, author of “The Edge of Time: The Authoritative Biography of Kalpana Chawla,” opened up about her decision to not carry the snack she was very fond of.
“Kalpana did not take samosas into space. She did not want to trouble the nutritionists with determining their calorie value, obtaining, and packaging them,” Harrison stated.
Chawla lost her life in a tragic incident during her second mission on board the Columbia space as the shuttle broke apart, killing the entire crew on February 1, 2003.
On the other hand, Williams is still pushing the limits of space exploration. She is scheduled to return to Earth on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon this month.
