The Indian-American astronaut will fly the first space capsules built by private companies, SpaceX and Boeing.
The eight active NASA astronauts and one former astronaut-turned-corporate crew member will launch on Boeing CST-100 Starliner and SpaceX Dragoncapsules to the International Space Station beginning in 2019.
United States President Joe Biden on Monday hosted a Diwali celebration at the White House that was attended by more than 600 eminent Indian Americans, including Congressmen, officials, and corporate executives, from across the country.
Only seven other US women and a single Russian woman have participated in the 281 spacewalks taken since 1965.
Total spacewalking time for Sunday's walk was 7 hours, 11 minutes. And, now they are all set to enjoy the spectacular Super Bowl football game between the Chicago Bears and the Indianapolis Colts.
The forecast for Friday morning is for light winds and a zero per cent chance of weather prohibiting the loading of propellants into the external tank.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Friday that the combination of technology and talent will be a guarantee for a bright future for the world.
She will become the third Indian-origin woman to fly into space after Kalpana Chawla and Sunita Williams.
American astronaut of Indian origin, Sunita Williams on Thursday charmed the students of Mumbai, who had gathered at the Nehru Science Centre to listen to her experiences in space travel.
"Early this morning, Mission Specialist Sunita Williams set the record for the longest-duration single spaceflight by a woman," NASA said in a statement.
Vithal said that during Sunita will also visit her ancestral village Jhulasan in Mehsana district in Gujarat
The unmanned SpaceX capsule returned to earth on Monday after successfully delivering its first commercial payload to the International Space Station commanded by Indian-American astronaut Sunita Williams.
Sunita Williams and Japanese space flyer Akihiko Hoshide ventured on Thursday outside the space station at 1229 GMT (1759 IST) and just a little more than five hours later, they had reconfigured some coolant lines and deployed a spare radiator, isolating the leak
The magnificent view of the Northern Lights from nearly 400 km above the earth's surface from the International Space Station made astronaut Sunita Williams turn metaphysical.
Record-setting Indian-American Sunita Williams along with two fellow astronauts safely returned to Earth on Monday from the International Space Station, touching down on the steppes of central Kazakhstan, after spending four months in orbit.
Superstorm Sandy, that has claimed many lives and wrecked havoc in the densely populated United States east coast region, looks enormous even when seen from space, Indian-American astronaut Sunita Williams has said as she prepared to add to her record-setting space walking sojourns. Williams is gearing up for another space walk scheduled for Thursday to find and repair an ammonia coolant leak at the International Space Station.
46-year-old NASA astronaut Williams, Russian Soyuz Commander Yuri Malenchenko and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency flight engineer Akihiko Hoshide arrived at the ISS after two days in orbit.
Bandla, a 34-year-old aeronautical engineer, on Sunday joined British billionaire Richard Branson and four others on board Virgin Galactic's Spaceship Two Unity to make a journey to the edge of space from the US state of New Mexico
Without the computers, the station cannot maintain proper orbit and its crew cannot stay on board.
Sunita and Commander Michael Lopez-Alegria completed the last of the internal assembly tasks for the startup later this year of the new Oxygen Generation System in the Destiny laboratory.
The 15-minute conversation, which took place on Friday, was broadcast on National Aeronautics and Space Agency Television, following the conclusion of a station status media briefing from NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.
"It is beautiful to see the countryside. There are so many colours. I think I have mentioned that before how colourful it is being in India. From the space, it is the same," she said.
Aeronautical engineer Sirisha Bandla on Sunday became the third Indian-American woman to fly into space when she joined British billionaire Richard Branson on Virgin Galactic's first fully-crewed successful suborbital test flight from the United States state of New Mexico.
NASA engineers are focusing their attention on a gap about 4 inches by 6 inches that was discovered after Friday's launch from Kennedy Space Center.
The International Space Station orbits the earth 16 times in a day.
Bob Curbeam and Christer Fuglesang began their spacewalk, the second of their 12-day space shuttle mission, at 1.41 pm CST, and finished a full hour earlier than scheduled.
Paternal kin of Indian-American astronaut Sunita Williams broke into spontaneous celebration as news of the safe touchdown of her spacecraft Atlantis trickled in the small hours on Saturday.
Hours after she returned to Earth onboard shuttle Atlantis after a record 195-day stay in space, Indian-American astronaut Sunita Williams was chosen Person of the Week by a leading US television network.
Atlantis' flight path brought it over San Diego and just east of Los Angeles before it touched down at Edwards where it was greeted by fair skies and light winds.
From students to villagers to fishermen, the village of Jhulasan are all praying from Sunita Williams' safe return to earth.
Attempting to land so close to rain or clouds would violate flight rules, NASA said.
During the six-hour, 29-minute spacewalk on Sunday, mission specialists Patrick Forrester and Steven Swanson successfully completed all the tasks assigned to them, including the activation of the ISS' new truss segment.
Williams has been kept up to date on the developments since the February 26 hail storm and is taking the uncertainty over her return to Earth in stride.
Based in the Cochin Special Economic Zone, Nikasu has managed to become the largest supplier of spring rolls and samosas to the US where it retails under the popular Laxmi brand (belonging to distributor House of Spices). In the UK, its products are sold as 'Taj' by Solanki Foods and are available at the supermarket chain Tesco. Another young but doughty exporter, Aakriti Foods, that makes Indian curries is also keen to launch its brand Mom's Pride in India.
Samosas from back home are remembered with longing.
'A wrinkle in the dress,' is what the Himalayas looked like for Indian-American astronaut Sunita Williams as she looked down on Earth during her six-month-long stay in the International Space Station.
Sunita, who arrived at the station with the STS-116 mission, replaced European Space Agency Astronaut Thomas Reiter on the Expedition 14 crew at midnight on December 12.
Indian-American astronaut Sunita Williams is all set for an unscheduled fourth spacewalk along with other members of the Discovery crew on Monday to retract the P6 port solar array on the International Space Station.
The shuttle is expected to undock from the International Space Station sometime Tuesday and land at Cape Canaveral in Florida on Thursday.
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