The shuttle is expected to undock from the International Space Station sometime Tuesday and land at Cape Canaveral in Florida on Thursday.
The ISS is expecting heavy traffic, something similar to rush hour.\n\n
A National Aeronautics and Space Administration astronaut has taken an incredible selfie from space with Earth in the background while performing repairs on the International Space Station on Christmas Eve.
About 800 people already have paid or put down deposits for rides on SpaceShipTwo, a six-passenger, two-pilot suborbital spaceship owned by Virgin Galactic.
"The first lesson from the Indian ASAT is just the simple question of why did they do that. And the answer should be, I think to all the committee looking at it, is that they did that because they are concerned about threats to their nation from space," US Strategic Command Commander General John E Hyten told members of the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday.
Sunita replaced German astronaut Thomas Reiter on the ISS, who will return to earth after a five-month sojourn in space.
Williams, 41, is also set to break astronaut Shannon Lucid's record for the longest stay in space ever by a woman -- 188 days and 4 hours -- on June 16, three days before Atlantis brings her back to Earth.
As the shuttle, scheduled to dock at 3:38 pm (0108 IST on Monday), closes in on the ISS, the stage is set for changes at the station and for its crew members.
India has sought the help of Russia to join the orbital International Space Station project in the face of "objection by some other project partners," a top Russian space agency official has said.
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.
"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.
Discovery carries enough supplies to stay in orbit till Saturday, but NASA flight rules call for reserving that day in case of an unanticipated orbiter systems glitch or malfunction.
The International Space Station orbits the earth 16 times in a day.
Despite doubts about the take-off due to poor weather forecast and a two-hour delay before tanking operations, Discovery and its crew of seven lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Houston at 7:17 am IST.
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.
Williams, who had carried a packet of samosas with her when she shot into space on December 11, 2006, said she would like to have more of the spicy snacks.
Samosas from back home are remembered with longing.
Trained to remain aboard the space station until July, Williams will also join space station commander Mike Lopez-Alegria for three spacewalks early in 2007.
Only seven other US women and a single Russian woman have participated in the 281 spacewalks taken since 1965.
Atlantis astronauts are gearing up to check the tail section of their spacecraft for a minor tear in the heat shield while they prepare for a spacewalk that was postponed by 24 hours because of a German crew member's illness.
'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.
The six-wheeled solar-powered rover named Zhurong, resembling a blue butterfly and with a mass of 240 kg, slowly trundled off a ramp on the lander to hit the red, sandy soil of Mars, starting its journey to explore the fourth planet from the Sun.
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 first of a record four spacewalks planned during the next month is scheduled to begin 0900 hours CST (2030 hours IST) on Wednesday.
Russian cosmonaut Yury Malenchenko, orbiting the Earth, will marry his earthbound American sweetheart on Sunday.
Williams said her long stay in space would definitely help her face the rigours of the long journey to Mars.
The day she returns is being christened Sunita Williams Day at NASA.
Indian-American astronaut Sunita Williams, who plans to run the 26.2 mile Boston Marathon on board the International Space Station on April 16, finds it a challenging exercise.
41-year-old Sunita, who became the second woman of Indian descent to venture into space after Kalpan Chawla, said she was all "excited" to go out and check the planet.
Russia and China are 'seriously' considering a project to install a nuclear reactor on the Moon in the next decade, the official media in Moscow quoted the head of the Russian space corporation as saying.
Mainstream American newspapers, many of which had been sceptical of India's space mission and sometimes even made fun of it through cartoons, noted the great Indian achievement.
"This warming trend is alarming," said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.
Payal Kapadia's understanding of what it means to be a woman is as poignant as her authentic portrait of Mumbai's hoi polloi, observes Sukanya Verma.
Students of the Asom Jatiya Vidyalaya in Guwahati on Wednesday had a memorable telephonic conversation with Edward Michael Fincke, the commander of the International Space Station, which is located 350 kilometers above the earth's surface.Fincke fielded questions ranging from his daily schedule at the ISS to his research work. He gave the enthusiastic students several insights into the food habits and water management at the zero gravity environment.
However, much is at stake for today's P6 solar array retraction. It is not expected to be a simple process. Since ISS went into orbit in 1998, it has been running on a temporary electrical system.
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.
The Borisoglebsk also launched a successful ballistic missile test on Saturday, hitting a target on Kamchatka, the Defence Ministry said.
Finally after their fourth unscheduled spacewalk, Discovery astronauts have successfully retracted a stubborn solar panel on the International Space Station.
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