SUNITA WILLIAMS took off for her second space mission on July 14, 2012 along with Yury Malenchenko of Russia and Japan’s Akihiko Hoshide on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. She is the second women with an Indian heritage to be selected by NASA for the space mission. Sunita Williams is a record-setting astronaut.

Last Wednesday's spacewalk by Sunita Williams and Akihiko Hoshide has completed the repair of the International Space Station's main power unit switching mechanism, which developed issues. Both of them were also armed with a brush, a wire brush and some tools and they applied grease to the sticky bolts and brushed away most of the debry to complete the task.

The Indian-American astronaut visited India in September 2007 and arrived in Ahmedabad on September 18, 2007, when she came for a week long visit to India. During her tour in India Sunita Williams visited Sabarmati Ashram of Mahatma Gandhi and her patrimonial village Jhulasan in Gujarat. The World Gujarati society awarded her the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Vishwa Pratibha Award. She spoke at the American Embassy School, and met Pratibha Patil at Rashtrapati Bhavan.

Sunita Williams said, "We are responsible for keeping Earth as we found it. From space, we saw glacier in Himalayas. Major changes are going on the planet and we need to own up to that." Our Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said, “Indian-American astronaut Sunita Williams is a role model for women and children in the country,” reported The Times of India.

Some time afterwards, Sunita Williams recount the technological challenges associated with the International Space Station to a gathering of scientists from across the world. The galaxy of scientist included the heads of space agencies of India, Russia, Japan, Canada, Europe and China at the 58th International Astronautical Congress which was held at Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh from September 24- 28.

Sunita Williams joined NASA in June 1998 as a flight engineer. She started her training in August 1998 which included intensive instruction in Shuttle and International Space Station systems, numerous scientific and technical briefings, physiological training and ground school to prepare for T-38 flight training, orientation briefings and tours as well as learning water and wilderness survival techniques, reported the website spacestationinfo.