Her 608 days in orbit were clearly not enough. Just retired NASA astronaut Sunita Williams says the upcoming Moon mission under the Artemis programme will give her FOMO even while she finds joy exploring Earth and all the places she glimpsed from up there in the sky.
On the inaugural evening of the Kerala Literature Festival on Thursday, a half moon shimmered over the water as if listening in and hundreds of people thronged to hear Williams as she reflected on her 27-year career -- the awe of seeing Earth from orbit, the teamwork that built the ISS and the simple joys she missed in space.
"Who doesn't want to go to the Moon... That was the whole reason I wanted to join NASA in the first place. So yes, of course, I will have FOMO (fear of missing out), but I am also excited to see my friends do this, to see my fellow human beings take this step," Williams said during a session titled Dreams Reach Orbit.
NASA is set to launch Artemis II, its first crewed Moon mission since 1972. Four astronauts will orbit the Moon in 2026.
"I have also discovered some really great places on Earth that I hadn't visited when I was in space. I have to fill my time, and I plan to do so by travelling all around -- Kerala is one of them," she told the the starstruck crowd packed into the venue. The 60-year-old recently hung up her boots — and four space suits.
In a stellar 27-year career, she logged 608 days in space, the second most for a NASA astronaut, and shares the sixth-longest single American spaceflight of 286 days with Butch Wilmore during NASA's Starliner and Crew-9 missions.
She has also completed nine spacewalks, totalling 62 hours and 6 minutes, ranking as the most spacewalk time by a woman and fourth-most on the all-time cumulative spacewalk duration list.
Calm and with nerves of steel, Williams makes no fuss about her achievements. For her, it's all part of the job. Nothing “extraordinary", not even the harrowing stretch when an eight-day mission to the International Space Station turned into a nine-month odyssey after problems cropped up on their Boeing Starliner flight.
Such was her faith in her training and the people she worked with that fear was the last thing on her mind, even when five of the spacecraft's 20 thrusters failed during a docking attempt at the International Space Station (ISS).
"The act of fear really never entered my head. What entered my head was the trust I had in the people on the ground, the trust I had in my friend and colleague Butch Wilmore, who was sitting right next to me, and the trust he had in me — and how we were going to solve this problem," Williams said. Of course, despite all her technical mastery and unwavering teamwork, she said she missed the simple, tactile joys of life on Earth.
While she could keep up with her family through video calls and even enjoyed following the latest news and rumours, there were things Williams couldn't replace from orbit -- the soft rain on her skin, the wind brushing her face, the feel of sand beneath her feet, and, most of all, the company of her dogs.
"I look at our planet, and not only do I feel the heartbeat of all the people, family, and friends I know, but also the animals that I love. It's amazing to see them in action here on our planet. This is our planet where they live, where the fish swim, where all the trees grow. And not being able to be part of that... that was deeply painful," she added.
Born to a Gujarati father, Deepak Pandya, from Jhulasan in Mehsana district, and a Slovenian mother, Ursuline Bonnie Pandya, on September 19, 1965, in Euclid, Ohio, Williams took the occasion to thank India for embracing her as its daughter.
Recalling her first space mission, she admitted she was initially sceptical when her father told her that people across the country were praying for her safe return.
"I said to him, 'I don't believe you. This can't happen.' And then, when I came home, I actually saw newspaper articles, and I realized it was true. A friend of mine was in the Himalayas at an elementary school and told me, 'Oh my gosh, your picture is at the school.' "I was like, wow. This is so heartfelt, so warming to me, that I have been taken as a daughter of India," she said.
Williams first launched aboard space shuttle Discovery with STS-116 in December 2006 and returned aboard Atlantis with the STS-117 crew. In 2012, she lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for a 127-day mission as part of Expedition 32/33 and went on to serve as space station commander for Expedition 33.
The four-day KLF literary extravaganza is hosting over 400 speakers, including Nobel Laureates Abdulrazak Gurnah and Abhijit Banerjee, authors Kiran Desai and Shashi Tharoor, historian Romila Thapar, essayist Pico Iyer, Jnanpith winner Pratibha Ray, sports icons Rohan Bopanna and Ben Johnson, and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.
KLF 2026, now in its ninth edition, will come to a close on January 25.
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