Sunita WilliamsAn Indian-American NASA astronaut is known to be taking items representing her culture to space on board the Boeing Starliner on Wednesday morning.
Williams, 58, along with fellow astronaut Barry “Butch” Wilmore, were part of the first crewed launch of the Starliner capsule to the International Space Station. Williams, a veteran of two other space missions, previously told reporters that she is bringing along a number of essentials, including sacred texts Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita and, of course, samosas.
“I really value my Indian heritage and was happy to take some of it into space,” Williams said at a 2013 press conference at the National Science Center in Delhi, before referring to the elephant-headed Hindu god. “Ganesh has always been in my house. Everywhere I’ve lived I’ve had Ganesh, so of course he had to come with me to space. And Indian food – you can never get enough of Indian food… so I had to make sure I had some samosas with me. We certainly had other types of Indian food there too.”
Williams, whose father is Indian and mother is of Slovenian descent, has been open about the importance of her heritage. During Expedition 32/33 in 2012, she also sent a greeting from space during Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights.
NASA selected Williams as an astronaut in 1998. She spent a total of 322 days and seven spacewalks during her two extended space missions. She once held the record for the total cumulative spacewalk time of a female astronaut, but that has since been broken by Peggy Whitson.
The latest launch made Williams the first woman to test an orbital spacecraft. The historic test flight – the third attempt after repeated delays – could pave the way for routine flights between Boeing’s Starliner capsule and NASA. Bonnie Pandya, Williams’ mother, told NBC News hours before the launch that her daughter was in good spirits and “so happy to go.”
Minutes before launch, Williams radioed back to mission control.
“Let’s go, Calypso,” she said, referring to the name of the Starliner capsule. “Take us to space and back.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
