Sunita Williams will join an elite club of spacewalkers

 

 

NEW YORK: The number of female astronauts in the US has exploded in recent years but there are a handful of women who have space walked which is considered one of the most dangerous activities in the space programme, after launches and landing. When Indian-American astronaut Sunita L Williams blasts off into space next week to spend six months on board the orbiting International Space Station she will perform three demanding spacewalks.

 

This will put her in an exclusive club of women who have walked in space. According to USA Today, since America first sent an astronaut on a walk in orbit in 1965, only six of the 157 NASA spacewalkers have been female and the “48 spacewalkers for NASA since 2000 have included only three women.” Sunita is following in the footsteps of NASA astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper who made two space walks in August this year to add solar panels to the space station.

 

“I am very excited to be performing the space walks. I don’t feel nervous at all. We get thoroughly trained for the tasks we are required to do up in space — part of that includes emergency training for situations that might go wrong. So I feel comfortable with the things that NASA will decide to do in outer space and the equipment and vehicle,” Sunita earlier told DNA over the phone before leaving for the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida where she is preparing to board the Discovery shuttle on December 7 at 9.35 pm along with six other crew members for the first night launch in four years.   

 

“Space walks require a lot of preparation so Expedition 14 won’t have too much time for scientific experiments,” added the 41-year-old astronaut. 

 

Sunita’s colleagues on Expedition 14 are veteran NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria who like her is also a graduate of the US Naval Academy and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin. Expedition 14 has plans for three space walks. Discovery will transport a new 11-million-dollar truss segment for the International Space Station that will be installed during the first spacewalk. Two other spacewalks are planned to rewire the space station, switching the temporary electricity system to a permanent one.

 

According to experts, one major reason for the lack of female space walkers is the existing spacesuits, which are not designed for small sizes. When NASA created its spacesuit in the 1990s, it made only mediums and larges because the majority of its male spacewalkers wore those sizes. The agency probably failed to anticipate that women would storm the final frontier. NASA has now gone blue in the face explaining that while it does not want to discriminate against women it doesn’t have the budget to make small suits. Sunita’s height probably allows her to wear the medium-size spacesuit, NASA’s smallest, which has a 42-inch chest. 

 

Even if NASA had a small suit, women would still be at a somewhat disadvantage because space walks are tough and astronauts need “strength and a long reach” to carry out repairs on the space station. Space veterans however, forecast that women will make some of the most complex spacewalks in the coming years. On the grim side, astronauts do face the risk of being badly hit by big particles when performing space walks.

 

There are other perils — the orbiter Columbia disintegrated over Texas on re-entry in 2003, killing the seven astronauts on board. Sunita lost good friends on the shuttle including India’s Kalpana Chawla. Sunita said she is getting used to the Indian media drawing comparisons with her and Chawla. “I feel very honoured to be compared even to Kalpana Chawla. She was a great friend of mine — an amazingly smart and wonderful, beautiful person,” said Sunita who often flew planes with Chawla.  

 

“My father was born in India and I was born in the US whereas Kalpana was born in India. She found her way to the goals that she wanted by leaving her home country that is amazing,” added Sunita. “I feel very close to India because of my father.” 

 

Sunita is the daughter of India-born doctor Deepak Pandya who migrated to the US in the 1960s and Ursaline, an American of Slavic descent. Pandya was a professor in Harvard Medical School and did important research in neuroscience.

 

“When I am up there for six months, I am definitely going to miss my family, miss my crazy Jack Russell Terrier named Gorby after Gorbachev and miss all the people on earth,” said Sunita. 

 

“Fortunately, my husband is sort of used to my going off to places — we were both in the navy together and we were always deployed in different places. He is used to it but I can’t wait for the day when we are able to live together for an extended period of time under one roof — that would be nice,” said Sunita who is married to physicist-turned-US deputy marshal Michael J Williams.