The NASA Women
One giant leap for womenkind! Kalpana Chawla and Sunita Williams, the two Indian-origin women astronauts, did what many could only dream of. Fifty years ago, women weren’t allowed to travel to space. One of the major concerns would be their menstruation cycles. There was no study conducted about periods in vaccum, until the first woman cosmonaut, Dr. Valentina Tereshkova, made it to space in 1963. She proved that the effects of microgravity didn’t interfere with the biological programming of our body.
Kalpana Chawla was the first woman and second Indian to fly in space. Unfortunately, her second flight was her last one. She had logged 30 days before her untimely demise. She was aboard the space shuttle Columbia, as a robotic arm operator. She marvelled at the way the Earth looks from space. She said that the atmosphere looked like multi-coloured ribbons hugging the Earth.
Her words of wisdom shall remind us of how important it is to work together to save our precious planet.
“When you look at the stars and the galaxy, you don’t feel that you are from any particular piece of land, but from the entire solar system,” were her words a few hours before Columbia burst while re-entering the Earth's atmosphere.
She set an example for millions of women. “The path from dreams to success does not exist. May you have the vision to find it, the courage to get on it and the perseverene to follow it. Wishing you a great journey,” were her words to the women who are constantly struggling to live up to their goals.
After Kalpana Chawla, Sunita Williams followed her footsteps. She has set the record for the most number of spacewalks--seven--and maximum spacewalk time for women--50 hours and 40 minutes. She has uploaded a virtual tour of the international space station, where she spent six months! She shows off her sleeping niche, her gym, her pantry and lavatory, in the video.
She shared interesting facts about space. To begin with, they had to live underwater, also called as “saturated diving”, for ten days, as a training program to live in extreme conditions such as space.
Here are a few words of wisdom from Sunita Williams:
“We realised we are the citizens of the universe.” Her favourite part was being able to watch the full panaromic view of the Earth from the dome-shaped module, that has seven big windows.
“Don’t get bogged down by the concept of limits.There aren’t any.” She spoke these words of wisdom after she recuperated from her space mission, expedition thirteen and fourteen.
As NASA plans for a space expedition to Mars, Sunita Williams quips that they’d need an astronaut with a medical background on board. NASA is currently hunting for potential astronauts for their Mars mission, scheduled for 2017.
