Raj Shamani # FO461: w/ Sunita Williams on 286 Days in Space (Transcript)

Like, wow, am I going to be able to pass this checkride? Am I going to be able to be a pilot? Am I going to be able to know how to do a spacewalk? Am I going to be able to do the robotic arm?

I think all those things. I think there’s points of insecurity. Yes, you prepare as best as you can. But then at one point in time, at least myself, I doubt myself at times.

RAJ SHAMANI: Do you do that today?

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Absolutely. I think we all do it. I think we all do that. Like, if you don’t, then you’re not really being introspective. I think it’s hard to think that you know everything and not have an appreciation for the rest of the world around you that might have a surprise for you.

RAJ SHAMANI: What are you insecure about today? Like, you’ve accomplished so many things now.

SUNITA WILLIAMS: A lot. I mean, the next steps of my life, what am I going to do in the next steps of my life? You know, I’m retired. We’ve moved. What am I going to do? I don’t know.

And I may think I’m insecure about it, but I don’t really care because it’s going to be, it’s all good. I know better now. It’s all going to work out. I wish I had known that when I was a kid because I think those insecurities take over a little bit more when you’re younger, when you don’t realize it’s all going to work out.

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Living With Uncertainty

RAJ SHAMANI: You know, it’s so fascinating. Your main work is uncertainty for living. Like, that’s what you do. You don’t know what’s going to happen the next moment. And you think about what’s going to happen next. That’s like you’re insecure about the uncertainty in your life. Like, what’s going to happen now.

But you’ve lived all your life just thinking about, let’s live in the moment and not think about what’s going to happen next.

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Yes, and I think you bring up a good point. I think that is the way you deal with it. Like, let’s live in the moment. I think people have insecurities, of course, when they look in the future, but you can’t make it. You can guide it, but you can’t anticipate every little thing. So living in the moment is, I think, the best methodology.

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The Art of the Pivot

RAJ SHAMANI: You say a lot about that. You’ve made a pivot. Every time things don’t work out, you made a pivot. So you wanted to become something else in the childhood, then you applied for certain things you didn’t get in, and then you finally ended up becoming who you are today.

How did you know that this is something that you don’t want to give up? Because every time when it didn’t work out, you just pivoted, you know, like, maybe not for me, not for me, not for me. And then…

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Well, this is another thing I think I wish I knew when I was a younger kid, that, you know, things work out for a reason. Maybe it’s because you have better qualifications in one area than another, although you think this is what you might want to do and be ready for those extra doors to open that you didn’t even anticipate.

So those are things that, like I said, I wish I had known then because I think I was a little bit more, had more anticipation, maybe a little bit more nervousness about it when I was younger versus just like sort of going with the flow because, like, let’s just see what’s behind the next door because it might be something that I never even imagined and things like that.

So that’s why I mention this when I’m talking to kids about this younger age pivot about trying to know what you want to do when you’re 17. That seems almost ridiculous now that I look back and think about it and I find myself asking kids too, like, what do you want to be when you grow up? What do you want to do when you grow up? How the heck do they know?

Sort of a silly question to ask them. More should be like, what are you interested in? What kinds of things have you been exposed to? Or do you want to do something else? Or can I guide you to a direction that might be something that you never even thought of, you know? That’s, I think, more appropriate questions, honestly, now that I look back at the whole thing.

Because how the heck do you know what you want to do when you’re a kid? And I think that causes a lot of anxiety and stress with people and you don’t need to have that.

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Finding the Path to Space

RAJ SHAMANI: True. What got you interested in this, in space, in NASA, in the things that you do?

SUNITA WILLIAMS: It wasn’t really a straight shot. So it wasn’t what I wanted to do when I was a kid. Even when I was a pilot, a helicopter pilot, it wasn’t the first thing on my list. It wasn’t until later that I got exposed to it.

So that’s why I say, like when I was just mentioning, like for, if I’m talking to a kid, like, how can I expose you to something else? Like just take a look at the space program, take a look at aviation. Those are my backgrounds, right. Take a look at diving or expose them to some other person, adult that has done something different, just so they get an idea of things that are out there.

Anyway, it wasn’t until I met somebody who had gone to space, gone to Johnson Space Center, and then I was like, wow, this job looks like fun. And some of those people were my friends that I had known as a test pilot. So I trusted their opinion also.

So getting to know more and more people who are in the jobs that potentially you might like is a good idea. So, like, if I had not really talked to a veterinarian beside for when I went to the vet with my dog, so probably I should have done like some type of internship somewhere with a veterinarian to find out if I really like that. But I didn’t do that.

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The Testing and Training Journey

RAJ SHAMANI: True. So, but let’s say you got interested in it, but before you enter, I’m assuming like before you enter a rocket, they would test you in some way, right? Maybe mentally, physically, there would be some kind of training going on.

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Oh, absolutely. When you first get to become an astronaut, wherever you’re going to be an astronaut, if it’s an American astronaut at Johnson Space Center, European in Cologne or Japanese at JAXA, or if you’re going to be like Shukla and do it like an Axiom flight, you’re going to be tested one way or the other here or during the process to one, become an astronaut and then two, on your journey to get trained, to be ready to go.

So there’s testing all the way along the way. So that’s sometimes intimidating, right? And going back to the insecurities a little bit. That’s sort of like, wow, I’ve never learned how to do this before. I don’t know if I know how to operate the robotic arm or, you know, get ready for a spacewalk. How am I going to learn how to do this?

And, you know, you find the mentors, the people who have done it before. Same time, all the way back. It’s full circle. Like, it’s like having, you know, talking to a kid about something that they might want to do and find out as much as you can and learn as much as you can and study and figure it all out.

And actually, if you have to, studying means also, like, for spacewalks, work out, right, because it’s physically demanding. So you know what you need to do, the background for each of those things and do the best that you can.

RAJ SHAMANI: Is there any psychological screening that you go through?

The Psychology of Space Training

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Oh, yeah, yeah. There’s definitely some testing, like just on paper testing. I’m not really sure what all that indicates, but there is some of that. Maybe it’s just to annoy you because you have to take a lot of, do a lot of written tests. I don’t know what it’s for exactly.

But then there’s parts where we are looking at astronauts together as they’re getting interviewed, giving them a problem that’s very hard to solve and seeing how they do that. And that’s not just like a paper problem, like a, you know, like, take this, whatever, this table and move it over this bridge and around this water and put it there and put people in groups and see who naturally falls out as a leader, who naturally adds to the team.

So we want to make sure we have team players because none of this is done by ourselves. And then we also do along the path when you’re getting trained, during the time that you’re waiting, we go to National Outdoor Leadership School. So you learn a little bit about yourself as well as other people, because you’re taking your way out of the scenario to some place.

Maybe you’re backpacking, maybe you’re doing rafting or something where you’re in an uncomfortable situation. You’re not sleeping in your own bed, you’re sleeping in a tent, you’re making your own food, you’re going to the bathroom in weird places, all getting you sort of ready for working as a team, and then finding out where your hotspots are, where your points are that make you uncomfortable.

I like organizing, you know, my stuff. You know, everybody has their little nest. Whenever they have the things that they have and when somebody doesn’t and their stuff’s all over the place, it a little bit drives me crazy. And I, so I know that about myself. So I know when I might encounter a crewmate that has stuff, like, all over the place that might, it might cause me anxiety, but that’s my problem, and I have to deal with that.

So does that make sense? You understand more about yourself because you can’t change other people.

RAJ SHAMANI: What was the most difficult part for you, the most difficult part of the training?

Overcoming Test Anxiety

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Of training. I get nervous about tests. I think it’s more like just when you have to do rote memorization. I think that’s what I was sort of, well, I was a lot insecure about, if you want to go back to that. During my college academics, I struggled. I did really well in high school, so I had a base because I went to a really good high school in our public high schools.

But academics in college were hard for me. Just taking tests were hard. Understanding, you know, I don’t know, whatever. Written tests are hard. So that carries, that’s carried through my whole life. So whenever I have a written test, I can feel that I get a little bit nervous about it.

Actually doing something I don’t get nervous about. Like, if I have to just go do something, it doesn’t bother me. Like, I just, I’ve trained, I’ve done it. Like, spacewalk stuff, robotic stuff doesn’t make me nervous. I just sort of put the things together logically in my head and I can do the task. But memorizing things and writing stuff down, that’s not.

RAJ SHAMANI: That’s the tough part.

SUNITA WILLIAMS: That’s tough for me.

RAJ SHAMANI: But what happens, like, is it not tough when five thrusts are failing? You’re, like, in middle of situation where it’s, like, chaotic. You don’t know what’s going to happen.

Compartmentalization Under Pressure

SUNITA WILLIAMS: I think, you know, like, isn’t that tough?

RAJ SHAMANI: Like, you have to compartmentalize that particular one.

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Yes. Compartmentalization is something that we’ve trained to do quite a bit, like, just with our military training as a military pilot, because you can only fix one thing at a time, and you have to just know your systems well enough to understand what capabilities you have and how you’re going to work with those capabilities.

So as the thrusters were failing, yes, this is a bad situation. Butch and I looked at each other and we’re like, oh, this is not so good. But we knew what we needed to do. We needed what we really needed to do was dock to the space station because we didn’t know how our spacecraft would react if we were doing other maneuvers at that point in time. So that was the biggest thing.

And I think, I mean, just like the movie The Martian, if you look at how he solved problems, it’s like one little bite at a time. When you have a big problem, you can’t deal with it, right? It’s too much. It’s overwhelming. I think just in life that’s happened too. Sometimes you like, I don’t know if you want to change something at your house. Sometimes the project looks too big and you just have to take one little bite at a time.

Okay, I’m just going to start with painting or I’m just going to start, you know, with picking out something that I have to add to my house. Same thing happens with these big problems, right, with thrusters. Like, okay, we can’t go outside and fix them. So we have to deal, we have to deal with what we have and we have to just handle this situation.

And we didn’t start thinking about, at least I didn’t think, start thinking about how we are going to come home. I thought, like, let’s just focus on docking and everything because there’s many parts of all of that and make sure that is all squared away. If that doesn’t happen, then we’ll work on the next thing. So you solve things one piece at a time. I think that’s how you solve big problems.

RAJ SHAMANI: Is there any mental technique that helps you keep calm during the time of chaos? Is there some kind of breath work that you do? Is it some kind of visualization technique? Something that you do or you just trained yourself so much that you don’t care. Like it just comes naturally.

SUNITA WILLIAMS: I think it comes naturally at this point. Honestly, we’ve all been in situations flying aircraft that something doesn’t work quite right and you just sort of have to figure it out and get it on the ground when you can. I mean, I have my own little aircraft and that situation happened at one point in time when the winds picked up quite a bit.

And I had to just sort of figure out like, okay, we’re not going to land here, we’re not going to land here, we’re going to land here. But at some point in time we have to land, we’re running out of gas. You know, you have to make that situation happen. Right?

Same thing with spacewalks too. Like, you know, something might not go well right from the get go, but doesn’t mean you stop and you just don’t do anything. On my first spacewalk, I lost a camera. You know, you just can’t, you can’t just sit there and be sad about these things. You just have to move on and pick the pieces up and just go with what you have.

And the same thing with the thruster situation on Starliner. And, you know, we knew that there would be a plan. We have what we practice quite a bit with our mission control team about what we call, like, no radio procedures, NORDO procedures. And so if we weren’t able to communicate with them, I think we would have already had a plan to go into ten meters and wait there and try to figure out how the spacecraft flew. If the spacecraft didn’t fly very well, then we would back away because we wouldn’t want to put the space station in danger.

Planning for Every Scenario

RAJ SHAMANI: How many situations do you plan for before you go?

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Oh, gosh, hundreds. And that’s what all that training is for. So people sometimes say, like, why do you have to train for two years for a launch of a spacecraft? Because we go through with our control team, all of the different things. Not us, only them. All of them think of, hey, what if this failed? What if that failed? And what’s the probability of this and that happening? So people have talked through all of that as much as they can.

So it was interesting, actually, I was just talking to somebody about an electric airplane. I’m like, what kind of failures do you have there? Because usually when you’re thinking about failures of something mechanical, like your car, there’s oil, there’s gas, there’s mechanical parts. So if it’s an electric vehicle, what problems do you have there? So batteries, obviously. So it’s a whole different, you know, every, every mechanical thing has some, some type of problems. And so you just got to be creative in the way you think about the failures.

RAJ SHAMANI: Has it ever happened that you’ve trained for everything and still something new has happened?

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Oh, the thruster failure. We’ve trained for thruster problems, and we’ve actually flown the simulator with one or two thrusters not working. And of course, the controls are sloppy. So five was a big deal and actually went against some of our flight rules about how we were going to operate spacecraft.

And so that’s when the control team came into play. And then they turned off some of the monitoring systems as well as restarted the engines. And that way we were able to at least get controllability, make sure we had controllability in all six axis, because we lost and won. And then we were able, bypassing some flight rules because they usually say that it has to be redundant. We went in and tried to dock and were successful. So that was great.

RAJ SHAMANI: Great. Has it ever happened that some astronaut has broken psychologically, like at one point they’ve just, maybe they were not able to take it?

Mental Resilience in Space

SUNITA WILLIAMS: No, I, I mean, I think the training is good enough that we make sure we send everybody up that’s, has that, those tools in their tool belt, they’ll be okay. I mean, everybody understands stress a little bit different. And like I said, that’s why we do some of that.

RAJ SHAMANI: Yeah.

SUNITA WILLIAMS: National Outdoor Leadership School. So you can understand that. You can see that when you, you’re with your other crewmates. You know, some people like some time by themselves. Some people are very chatty, you know, when they get stressed out. So there’s, it’s going to happen. Everyone’s going to, it’s going to happen at some point in time. So to a degree, though, everybody’s in a box, in a controllable box, you know.

RAJ SHAMANI: So, have you cried in space?

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I miss people and I miss my dog, so of course I cried. You know that. Yeah, absolutely. There’s been goods and bads. I mean, and also like, like for really good things that have happened, too.

A friend of mine, her mom was sick while we were in space and just having those conversations, you know, that’s just, you know, your friends, your colleagues. If someone told you their parent was sick and they were having some problems and, you know, that’s hard to deal with. And so you’re helping somebody else and you’re just being a friend shoulder that somebody can, like, lean on.

And, you know, same thing happens. Like, I get frustrated with something and I’m talking to my, one of the crewmates up there about something or something that’s happening at home. Yeah, absolutely. Everybody, everyone goes through normal emotions here as in there. Yeah.

RAJ SHAMANI: So what happens when you cry in space? Your tears don’t fall?

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Oh, yeah, everything. Water all around you gets just sort of balled up on you. Same with, like, when you’re working out is you get super sweaty because stuff just gets like too much water everywhere. So you need a couple tissues.

RAJ SHAMANI: So, like, you just start crying. Like, is it difficult? Is it like, just stuck?

SUNITA WILLIAMS: This will just make your eyes very watery, like really watery. You got to get rid of that, though, so you can see. You’ll be like a fish in an aquarium.

The Reality of Daily Life in Space

RAJ SHAMANI: I have to ask you a weird question.

SUNITA WILLIAMS: What.

RAJ SHAMANI: What’s the worst part about using a bathroom in space?

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Oh gosh. So much about it. No gravity assist. And so you, for me, I, you know, first of all, you just, absolutely just being able to do it first. The first thing right, because you need to get rid of everything at some point in time, get rid of all that bad stuff. So you have to go to the bathroom.

So doing it, first of all, getting over the fear of like going, because you know it’s not going to fall down. So it’s like, okay, you just got to go and turn the hose on and it’ll take it away and don’t worry about it. So then, and then the number two part that’s also adds, your body’s not used to it. So you have to sort of get your body used to those muscles to push everything out the right way.

And then, and then it’s just sort of, I wait, I wait till I’m ready to go and then I could just go. I think that takes care of it. That takes care of all the wishy washy about it. If you can’t really, you have to commit. You have to just get in there and just go.

RAJ SHAMANI: You also said, I was reading somewhere you said that people fart a lot up there.

Life Aboard the ISS: Smells, Sounds, and Unexpected Challenges

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Oh yeah, yeah, there’s a lot. And I don’t know why exactly, but it just happens. Everybody does. Because if it’s the preservatives in the food or something like that, I’m not really sure why, but everybody, everybody does. And I think after a while, potentially people get used to it and it seems like it happens a little less for some people, but sometimes for other people it just keeps going on. It’s terrible.

RAJ SHAMANI: And then you have to live up in that space for like the days and it smells bad.

SUNITA WILLIAMS: No, it’ll move. It’ll move. We have a pretty good ventilation system. So stuff starts to move around pretty quick. But if somebody farted and you’re right behind them flying through the module, you’re going to fly right through it.

RAJ SHAMANI: How does space smell like?

SUNITA WILLIAMS: It smells like us. It smells like the food that we eat. It smells like us. But interestingly enough, I think it’s not that bad because we had at some periods of time 12 people on the space station, when generally 7 and people are all working out, people are all eating. And to me, it didn’t smell that bad at all.

I mean it was just sometimes a little stronger when some stronger types of food. I eventually got Indian Food, for example. So you could smell that. Some things with garlic, you know, obviously you could smell that. I actually really like the smell of garlic. So for me it was fine. Sometimes fish because we had like a lot of salmon or tuna fish. And so that sticks around for a little bit longer maybe, but it all ends up dissipating.

The Sounds of the Space Station

RAJ SHAMANI: So that smell. What about the sound? Because ISS, it creaks and moans right. Like you can hear that sound almost all the time.

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Some areas. It also depends on what the sunlight, how our orbit is in comparison to the sun. So sometimes when we’re getting heated up quite a bit, there’s some areas which the metal sort of just pops and bends a little bit. And then that was reported, obviously somebody was like, oh, what happened? And so then we realized what the situation is.

So whenever there’s like a lot of sun on these parts are called the pressurized mating adapter because they’re black on the outside. If you look at different parts of the space station, you’ll see most of it’s silver, which is sort of reflective. But some of it is this black part. And that’s the part that gets really hot, makes those creaks and moans and bumps.

Other things beside for that are some of the ventilation. And you can hear stuff kick on, start up and shut down. That happens periodically. Obviously you can find it on the, you know, if you go into the computer page where it has the system that has that specific system, you probably see what happens.

RAJ SHAMANI: Have you heard any scary sound? Like what’s the scariest sound you’ve heard? I’m just like childlike, curious right now at this point.

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Yeah.

RAJ SHAMANI: When you were stuck like for 286 days, what’s the most scariest sound you heard?

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Gosh, I’m trying to think of something. I think valves moving, closing and opening. I don’t know. I am used to the space station. The space station is sort of like a second home. So my first time up there, I’m looking at it up on the wall. That’s why I’m looking at this. I’m trying to think of what was scary.

But my first time there when I was in the forward part of the space station, living there by myself with my two other Russian colleagues in the way. But yeah, I got scared a little bit because first time I’m very hypersensitive to all of these switching of pumps and fans and noises.

One antenna right outside our former, there was a crew quarters there would turn every now and then night, or I think it was a camera, actually. And sometimes the folks in Mission Control would turn it so they could see stuff, and it was right outside the window so we could hear inside.

So I was asking a lot of questions during that flight, like, what’s that? What’s that? What’s that? But now that I’ve lived there for a long time, I feel like I know most of the things that are happening. Or I can figure it out. Like, okay, that sounds like a motor, that sounds like a valve. So that must be coming from over here. So this is this.

So, you know, it’s just like as though you’ve again, lived at your house for a long time. So you get used to, like, when the furnace kicks on or something. And, oh, yeah, that’s happening again.

RAJ SHAMANI: But for the first time, you must have heard at that time. Did it scare you the first time?

SUNITA WILLIAMS: It did. Because particularly when I was, like I said, the only person living in that part of the space station and my other American counterpart had gone home. And, you know, this was my responsibility was this part of the space station. I was like, oh, what is that? What is that? What is that?

So I ended calling the ground a couple times, probably in that time frame, if I remember correctly. Just sort of, is that normal? Is that normal? And they were like, yes, yes, don’t worry about it.

A Debris Field Emergency

RAJ SHAMANI: Was there any point where, in all your time in space, was there any point where you heard some sound and you’re like, oh, this is it. Like you froze for a moment and you got scared?

SUNITA WILLIAMS: No, I wouldn’t say that. I think we were all a little on edge in this latest flight when we had a satellite below us in orbit explode or disintegrate or something. And then there was a bit of a debris field. And so we were woken up in the middle of the night to all go to our own spacecraft. It’s called Safe Haven. Because they weren’t sure whether or not the debris would hit the space station.

So we had about 45 minutes. And the funny part about that is we all met at the bathroom, essentially, one last time to go to the bathroom on the, as I call it, the big hotel in space. Because the spacecraft are sort of like a little camper. So they don’t have really good bathrooms on the spacecraft.

And so, you know, take advantage of, okay, I’ve got 45 minutes. What am I going to do? I’m going to go to the bathroom. I’m going to get some water, hug my friends, say goodbye. That was a little bit surreal situation, I think, not because of the bathroom. The bathroom was just sort of funny.

But as we were leaving, three spacecraft that have human beings that are going to return to Earth. So one spacecraft’s going to go and land in the ocean, one’s going to land around the United States, one’s going to land in the desert in Kazakhstan, one’s going to land in the desert in the United States.

And we all sort of hugged each other and we’re like, hopefully, I’ll see you on Earth. You know, that was a little bit weird, and I wasn’t necessarily scared. Just sort of, you know, made me stop for a moment and go like, wow, this would be bad if we all had to leave. And then we leave the space station.

We had some things we had to do to make sure the space station was in a safe configuration as much as possible. Closing hatches, getting things ready. So we didn’t have time to, too much time to sit around and think about it. But for a second, that flashed through my mind as we were all there by the bathroom and we were giving each other a couple little hugs, saying goodbye. So that was weird. That was a little unsettling, I guess.

The Unpredictability of Extended Stay

RAJ SHAMANI: You said this time, this flight, the last one was pretty messed up when you got stuck for 286 days.

SUNITA WILLIAMS: I don’t know if I would say messed up is the right word. I would say it was a little bit unpredictable in the beginning. Like, that whole summer was, unfortunately, that was the hardest part, I think the beginning part for once. After we launched and then we got to the space station, we knew we weren’t going to come home as planned. But there was a lot of people on the ground who were still working to, we’re going to get home. We’re going to come home tomorrow. We’re going to come home tomorrow.

RAJ SHAMANI: We’re going to come tomorrow.

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Like, wait a minute. We all have to understand what the problem is and understand what the fix is and all that kind of stuff.

RAJ SHAMANI: But…

SUNITA WILLIAMS: But of course, NASA doesn’t want to miss an opportunity, so they still had a lot of people turned on to keep working through all this. So that meant there was questions coming to us and we were answering questions back and forth when it seemed like the probability was pretty slim that we’d coming back in the next two weeks or months.

We really needed to get some answers to what happened and understand that problem and see if there’s an adequate fix before we would get back in that spacecraft. So that whole time frame, it’s hard to have patience, right? I think all of us have to work on that. They say patience is a virtue, and it’s very true, because it’s sort of like when something uncontrollable is happening. You just have to sort of wait until the appropriate answer is provided.

That’s hard because you sort of want to go, how’s it going down there? How’s it going? Have you solved the problem yet? You know, what is the answer? Do we know yet? And you sort of have to give people some time. So we tried our best. I think we were sort of annoying at some points in time and asking the questions and try.

And it’s hard when you’re up in space. It’s like during COVID when we had Zoom calls, it was really hard to really, you know, get to the bottom of some things, right? Because you had to just, you couldn’t see somebody. You couldn’t go and put your hands on something. You’re not right there. And that’s what it’s sort of like all the time on the space station.

We aren’t there. I’m not seeing the test set up. I don’t know what all the par. I listen to the meetings, but you know how it is in Zoom Calls. Sometimes your mind is doing something else when you should come back to what’s going on, right? So it’s a little bit, it was hard to really be part of the solution process. It was easy to ask questions, but it’s hard to be part of the process. And so that was a little frustrating.

I think the not so frustrating part at first, but then became frustrating, was my family. I think they were wonderful at first, like, oh, you know, just come home, be safe. It’s all, like, it’s all good, you know, like, you know, you’re going to be home soon. You know, you’ll be home by the fall. It’s all good, you know.

So then I think the hard, harder part, of course, is like turning that and telling folks that you’re not going to be home for a little longer. And so, you know, by the end, I think we were both, Butch and I, before even the decision was made. We had an idea that this is not going to happen. And we knew the next time we’d come home is with the next spacecraft.

I mean, this is the process. We’ve been living for a long. We know that every six months, there’s a spacecraft that goes up and there’s a spacecraft that comes home, and they’re not going to change that. It’s very expensive, it’s a contract, it’s the production of the spacecraft. So that’s how it’s going to go.

So as the summer went on and it was getting clear that we probably weren’t going to come home, we knew it would be six more months. So that’s when making those phone calls, like around the August time frame, like, I’m not coming home for a little while, we’ll see you next year.

But I think I’m very, very fortunate. My family was like, hey, it’s okay, don’t worry about it. Have a good time. Come home on a safe spacecraft. And I wrote journals on my first two missions. And I started it, started it while we were up there for the summer. And my sister’s like, just keep writing the journals because they’re fun to read. I’m like, oh, okay.

And it’s not just fun. I have a group of people that I sent those to. So I was able to take a lot of people along on the journey with me and show them through my photographs. Not just mine, but my crewmates photographs and what we were doing up there, what it’s like to live and work in space.

And you know, the aperture gets widened when you have time to do that. So I had a lot of people following along with me. And you know, because I was doing that, a lot of support from friends and family. So that was pretty awesome.

RAJ SHAMANI: So that first time when you got this feeling that hey, maybe you’re not going home and you’re definitely, you’re asking questions to the ground support, you’re asking questions, but when you’re alone, you’re not asking questions and you’re impatient. What’s going on in your head like now, you know you’re not going to go home for a while.

Life Aboard the ISS: Staying Busy and Helping the Team

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Oh yeah. So I mean, right from the beginning anyway, we had had things to do for our spacecraft while it’s stuck to the space station, those test points just working. So we did, we just kept that whole process right. What we had already planned to do for those next 10 days. And we had a little extra time, so we’re doing some little extra tests. So that was great.

And then after that, you know, we had some free time essentially, which and I, of course we had, we worked out. So it’s, how do we help? How do I put new part of the team? You know, I need to occupy my time with that type of stuff. I like doing that. I’m not going to sit around and feel sorry for myself.

Hey, hey, there’s 12 of us up here. We’re going through a lot of food. How about if I transfer the food and put it in the right place? How about if I work on the toilet? Because we’re going through the toilet supplies faster than we should. So how can I help out and just help the team?

The things that are like standard things that you have to do, like take the trash out, all the things that we normally do here at home, there’s specific things we do that we train for. Then there’s things that you just have to do on a routine basis. So just try to jump in and help the team as much as possible.

RAJ SHAMANI: You don’t give yourself time, just keep yourself occupied all the time.

SUNITA WILLIAMS: I do. Generally, I don’t like to hang out. Just hang out. That’s sort of silly. Specifically in space, there’s a lot of things to do. It’s like never a dull moment.

And then once it was sort of, not even then, I think just in general, if there was free time and somebody was working on an experiment, sometimes your hands are in a glove box and then you need to get something to do, something you have to take your hands out of glove box. Little bit of production, or you have protective equipment on because you’re working on something that’s a little bit dangerous. And so then you’re trying to make a phone call that’s hard because you have to undo everything and call back to the ground, you know, get everything off of you.

So for me it was like, oh, if that person’s working on the experiment, how about if I’m your right hand man, if you need something, just tell me, I’ll go over here and get it for you. Or, you know, you’re working on the toilet with all that stuff on, I’ll make the calls down to the ground and then we could work through all these things more efficiently.

So there’s all of that to do too, just to help out the team. And that’s what we’re trained to do, you know, just to help out. And that makes the, that makes time go by for one thing. Not that time you really want time to go by, but that also just helps everybody out.

And of course, the cool thing that we did, well, we, I think we not, not me in particular, but my crewmates were really great photographers. And so Butch and Don, they ended up spending time, like setting up different cameras to take some amazing time lapses and stuff like that too. There’s always something to do while you’re up there.

Never Losing Hope

RAJ SHAMANI: Was there a night where you lost hope?

SUNITA WILLIAMS: No, no, no, no, no, no. That’s so funny that that’s a question. It is interesting that people said like, and I understand, I guess I could understand why just because of the press and the narrative that was going on, that we were stuck in space.

I really wasn’t scared because I knew that there was hundreds of people, if not thousands, that are working on trying to figure out one, what the problem is, two, can we fix it? And three, how do we get back? So all of that was going on, that was all happening.

RAJ SHAMANI: Not even for one, like moment, you felt like, maybe this is it, I’m not going home?

SUNITA WILLIAMS: No. We actually, even before our spacecraft left, we designed some sort of makeshift seats on the Dragon that was there. So we had planned seats in case something happened, in case we had another safe haven or something that we had to get in our spacecraft because of something that happened that was out of our control.

We actually had a seat in a spacecraft. It wasn’t a great seat. It didn’t have, you know, air breathing connections in a spacesuit, but we did still have a seat. So, I mean, there’s always, there’s always something. We always plan on something. Those seats needed to be completed. Those seats needed to be completed before we told Starliner to leave.

RAJ SHAMANI: Wow.

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Yeah.

RAJ SHAMANI: Never. That’s incredible.

SUNITA WILLIAMS: No, I mean, I have a lot of…

RAJ SHAMANI: Because like from here down here, like all the press, all the news, all the stuff that we read, it look like, like you’re stuck, like there’s no hope for you to come back. No sign. Boeing fighting. They’re like people just stuff going on and there are thousands of people making content on you and it just, it felt pretty scary. And like, genuinely, I’ve seen so much content where people were worried. Everybody was wondering.

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Yeah, yeah. So I, like I said, I understand why people would have that impression just because of what the narrative that was going on and the miscommunications, I think back and forth and I think that’s a little potentially unfortunate.

Family Support and Communication

RAJ SHAMANI: But did your family ever feel like…

SUNITA WILLIAMS: No. No. That’s because we were in touch all the time.

RAJ SHAMANI: You spoke to them after coming back and did they have the same feeling that…

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Absolutely. You probably saw my mom at some point in time on the news and she, was she not worried? Because, I mean, I’m talking to her, I’m telling her that it’s going to be okay. You know, it’s not, not something they need to worry about.

The sort of what I don’t want to call it, like, really makeshift, but the seats in the Dragon, that wasn’t a great scenario. And we have, we talked about that, and there was a little bit. Folks were not ready for that scenario. Like, oh, like, what now we have to accommodate two more people in this Dragon in case there’s a problem. How do we do it?

People came up with some great Apollo 13 solutions with these makeshift seats and stuff, but this is not the professional right way to do it. And so now we actually have a seat kit. So if somebody from another spacecraft needs to transfer over to this one, they’ll be able to do that with a better seat, and we’ll be able actually have extra spacesuits, so we’ll be able to do that.

We have, we’re working on, I’m not sure the status of it, but, like, being able to connect the air with another seat with a T, like a Y cable. So all of those are great lessons learned because that was, I think, the worst part. That wasn’t a great platform to land. Somebody might have, you know, we did our best that we could do.

We actually had a medical doctor who had a lot of experience in this, in this setup. So he did as best as he can to try to come up with seats, but that wasn’t optimal. It’s not really the right way to do stuff. So like I said, that was the most uncomfortable lever. And those seats were like, I don’t really want to come home like this.

But the probability, right, that something would hit the space station after we had already had something happen was pretty low. So in my estimation, we all take risks. We’re in this business because it’s risky. Not because, but as a byproduct of this business, it’s risky. When you launch on a rocket, when you’re in space and coming home, you accept some of those risks. So this was not out of the box.

The Perception of Time in Space

RAJ SHAMANI: Would say when you’re up there, you go through multiple sunrises and sunsets in a day, right? I think 16. Yeah, yeah. 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets in 24 hours. Some days would feel like very short. Some days would be very long. Right. Which one was the longest day for you?

SUNITA WILLIAMS: So when you’re on a deployment or an expedition, I think time changes just in your head, right? Obviously, it doesn’t change in general, but it changes as once we got to that point where we knew we were going to stay for a little bit longer, it was almost like a reset. It was almost like the start of the whole expedition all over again, because other folks were leaving. And then we were going to be the normal seven. So at that point in time, it felt like it’s just starting. So time is normal.

Somewhere in there, there was a thought that we might not come home until May. And, and somewhere around Christmas, like, ooh, that might be long. We’ll be up here for a long period of time. And so that’s when time sort of slowed down a little bit. And also it goes hand in hand with activity level. Also. We had just finished doing a lot of science experiments. We were just getting ready to do some spacewalk stuff. So we had a little bit of a lull time. And so time was a little bit slow there.

And then it accelerates when activities happen again. As soon as we started getting ready for spacewalks, like a week and a half, two weeks before the spacewalks, things started going fast. Our first spacewalk was January 16th. And then so right after New Year’s, it was like, oh my gosh, now time is like accelerating.

Then we had another one at the end of January. And then it was like a breather for a second thinking, okay, now we have a lot of time again, slow down. And then they said, okay, now you’re coming home and March all of a sudden. And so then all of a sudden time really accelerated and everybody was like, let’s get one last picture. Let’s, do you know, what did I want to do before I left? All of that was happening really quick.

So I think it goes in waves, depending on activity level, depending on the projection of when you might be home. I’ll go back to the very beginning. The summer seemed a little bit long too. That seemed like it was dragging on a little bit without decision.

Connection and Family in Orbit

RAJ SHAMANI: Did you feel, did you feel lonely in one of those 286 days?

SUNITA WILLIAMS: I don’t know about lonely. There was always people around, but family wasn’t. Yeah, the family wasn’t. The people that you end up living in space with are like family, though. They become family.

Like, you’ve probably seen pictures of us during Christmas time. Thanksgiving and Christmas, where we, we tried to connect with family. We actually had, like in the United States, there’s a big parade, Macy’s Day parade for Thanksgiving, we had that on a screen so we could watch. It sort of makes that connection back to home.

And on those, on holidays we actually have some time off. So it’s nice to be able to call home and do like a video conference with people back at home too, and do a tour, show people around and it’s fun to see your crewmates, like, at the dinner table and have them wave to your family and see each other’s families and stuff like that too.

So I think when you get lonely, you have an opportunity to, one, make some phone calls on the weekends or when you have some free time, make some video calls and just try to see what’s going on back at home and have folks back at home try to see what’s going on up in space.

I reconnected with a lot of my relatives while I was up there, which was wonderful. Some of my folks, the capability is there, right? And we all learned it from COVID how to zoom and how to do video conferences. Sometimes not so successfully as everybody’s talking on top of each other.

But, you know, some of my relatives here in India, some of my relatives, you know, all over the country in the United States, would all get on and then I could talk to them and give them a tour around. That was actually a lot of fun and makes it not feel like, lonely.

Of course, when you hang up, you’re like, oh, you know, I wish I was down doing this. Or, you know, when somebody’s telling you some of the fun things that they’re doing, of course you wish you were there being part of that. But then you pinch yourself for a second and you say, oh, my God, I’m living up in space. This is so cool. Go to the window for a second and see how beautiful it is.

I mean, I really wasn’t that lonely, honestly.

RAJ SHAMANI: Not at all?

SUNITA WILLIAMS: No. I miss my dogs mostly.

RAJ SHAMANI: So you never had the loneliest night in space? You don’t remember?

Dreams and Experiences in Space

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Not really. Maybe I feel like I’m a robot answering these questions. But, you know, I mean, that’s, I think one of the things that I would like people to realize, like, this is an amazing opportunity when you have an… I mean, even I think about when I had deployments at sea. You know, you get up in the morning, maybe it’s an attitude, I don’t know. But you get up in the morning, you go outside, and you see some of the most beautiful sunrises that you can ever imagine in the middle of the ocean on a deployment.

Same thing. You get up in space and you go to the window and you don’t know what you’re going to see. I mean, every day is like, oh, it’s there. You know, it’s a surprise, or it’s nighttime, or what does lightning look like? Or whatever. It’s just incredible. And you also know that this is not going to last forever. You’re going to come home at some point in time.

I mean, I think that’s always on the back of my mind. I was like, this is a chance. Even on my first flight, I was sad to leave. I was, like, crying when I left, because I was like, I don’t know if I’ll ever have this opportunity again. And it’s so incredible.

RAJ SHAMANI: What are the kind of dreams you get in space? Is it different?

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Oh, interesting. My father asked me the same question because he was a neuroscientist. And, you know, sometimes you dream about… I think you dream about sometimes experience. Right. So it was like dreaming about where you are, what you’re doing, and then it gets a little bit crazy, as all dreams do. Right. So they’re not reality.

But like, I was dreaming that I was in space. I was dreaming that I was doing spacewalks. I was also dreaming that I was back at home. Like, it was so interesting that you could dream about both of those. And I feel like when I’ve come back to Earth, I’ve also dreamed about being in space as well, because I’ve had that experience.

It seems like it wears off, though, which is unfortunate, as the farther and farther you get away from your space flight, you sort of come out of that. Like, it’s like I don’t dream as much about space anymore. I used to when I first got back quite a bit.

RAJ SHAMANI: But is it different when you dream here on Earth and when you dream in space? Like, is it the kind of dreams… do you dream of falling? Do you dream of…

SUNITA WILLIAMS: All the same. I think the same in that regard, but based on experience. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I wasn’t falling. If I was dreaming about space, I wouldn’t fall.

RAJ SHAMANI: Yeah, exactly.

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Yeah.

RAJ SHAMANI: So there’s nothing different about it. Do you hear, like, different kind of sounds? Because you’re always constant in an environment which is either very silent or, like, very noisy.

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Oh, it’s noisy all the time.

RAJ SHAMANI: All the time.

Radiation and Light Flashes

SUNITA WILLIAMS: I think the most… the biggest impression, though, is as you’re getting ready to fall asleep. Before you’re asleep, you see, like, little… like little pieces of light with your eyes closed and it’s dark. And the reason, I guess it’s… it’s radiation, I think, that’s coming. And so it’s not like what your eyes are seeing. It’s some radiation that’s hitting some part of your brain, which is triggering a vision of these little light flashes which is a little bit bizarre.

I wouldn’t say it’s scary, but it’s a little unnerving because then you’re like, oh, what kind of radiation am I getting up here? And I’m not protected. You know, that’s some of those long term effects of being in space. I think just in general, health wise, a little worrisome. So you want to protect yourself as much as possible.

RAJ SHAMANI: What’s the health cost you pay when you come back?

SUNITA WILLIAMS: So like… so I mean initially when you come back you’re not feeling very good, but that goes away pretty quick.

RAJ SHAMANI: What are you feeling like the moment you land on Earth?

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Yeah. Nauseous.

RAJ SHAMANI: 286 days… nauseous, like a little sick.

Returning to Earth After 286 Days

SUNITA WILLIAMS: And it didn’t help that this time we landed in the water and then, you know, everybody was concentrating on the dolphins that were there outside of the capsule. But if you look at while the dolphins are swimming or when we landed we went all the way over and then back up again. And it was funny because the thought in my head was like, oh no, if we turn over all the way upside down, that’s not going to be good. But you know, it was just sort of like casual thought like that. Like, oh, that’s not going to be good. And then we came back up and we’re sort of bobbing for a second like a cork.

So if people don’t feel good when they’re on a boat, think about it that way. You feel a little bit nauseous and you’re going to feel nauseous anyway. For me, I always feel a little nauseous when I come back. The neurovestibular system has not been working while you’re up in space. It sort of shuts down and you have other feelings of orientation while you’re up there.

The way we evolved, our inner ear for balance is not needed while you’re up in space because gravity is not affected on it. So anyway, when you come back, all of a sudden gravity’s a player. And then for me I felt pretty nauseous for like 24 hours. But something that’s provocative, as they say, is like getting out of your spacesuit when you put it over your head, pitch your head up like that. That really makes you feel a little sick.

So we get out of, we are getting out of the spacecraft and we get out on a, like a sort of like a little seat with people helping us because there’s a big hole in the spacecraft for where the cargo is and so nobody wants to trip and fall, getting out, first of all, because you’re not feeling too good. And then they just take us to the back where we can get out of our space suits.

Right after that, though, once you’re out of your suit and you’re not feeling like you’re going to throw up, you can stand up. And we walked up the stairs to where the helicopter was and took us out of there. So that… still nauseous for me for about 24 to 48 hours is the big thing.

And usually you’ll see people with somebody helping them, supporting them, just because all those little balance muscles that you use here on Earth that you don’t even realize, and the small muscles in your neck, all of that has to get recharged again. And so that takes, for me, you know, realistically, to get all the way back about a month.

And we work with our physical trainers, too, for some certain exercises. And they give us tests along the way to see how we’re doing, see how we’re improving. And it’s actually pretty cool to see your body, like, come back to human self again, you know, to earthly self again.

Readjusting to Gravity

RAJ SHAMANI: Do you feel, like, when you come back for that month, when you’re trying to acclimatize, adapt to the Earth again, you feel like things are falling or like if you pick up the pen, then it’s just going to go like that. Like, you get these things because I saw a video of eating the liquid pineapple juice. I saw that.

SUNITA WILLIAMS: It happens for a little bit, but you’ll learn pretty quick that… or gravity is the predominant force on this planet, so you can’t get away from it. So it’s here, it’s not…

RAJ SHAMANI: But you learn, like, pretty quickly. But do you, like, you’ll do something…

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Stupid first. Like, I’ll just drop this bottle, like, oh, okay, never mind. So you do it. You do one thing and then it’s… then just like you’re back. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

RAJ SHAMANI: And is it, like, more difficult for you to walk after you come back?

SUNITA WILLIAMS: No, no, not really. It’s not difficult. You’re just going to potentially fall over. So I mean, just because of balance. So you need… that’s why somebody usually helps.

RAJ SHAMANI: Even in that month?

SUNITA WILLIAMS: No, no, no, no. Just for like two days or something. Yeah, yeah. And usually we don’t drive for a little bit just because, you know, your reaction time might be a little bit slow. And so somebody will take us, drive us to where we need to go for the first week.

RAJ SHAMANI: And all your senses, do they work differently when you come back? Like the sound, the smell?

Rediscovering Earth’s Sensations

SUNITA WILLIAMS: I think enlightened to what’s here on Earth. Like, I remember distinctly on my first mission, we landed in the desert in California. And the smell when they… soon as they opened the hatch, the smell of dirt and sage, because there’s a lot of the sage plant there. That smell was so predominant, like, wow. Like, I could just… we’re back on a planet, you know, on planet Earth again. So it was… it was wonderful. It was nice because things that you miss, like all of that and like, wind. Those are like, things that you really like. Oh, my gosh, I feel this.

And being in the first time in a shower feels really, really good. Not just… not because you’re necessarily dirty, because we don’t really get dirty up there. We just sweat and then, you know, take a sponge bath. But just to feel something falling on you, that’s really nice.

And one of… it’s funny, one of the other things that Don Pettit and I had this conversation, like, you know, what I really miss is a sink. Like, just to go someplace and put your hands under, wash your hands, and then wash your face. Those things you just miss, versus just squirting water and then rubbing it on yourself, you know? So I don’t know, there’s just different funny things like that that get little triggers.

RAJ SHAMANI: When you came back, the first thing you ate was the veg grilled cheese sandwich.

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

RAJ SHAMANI: Because it reminded you of your father.

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Yes, yes. Well, it’s funny, I had that before I flew on my first flight for sure, from my father, and I was thinking about it coming back up again, and I’m like, oh, this will be smooth. It won’t be hard to get if I throw up. And when I came back to Earth, specifically this time, over the last couple years, my husband has started to make homemade bread. And I couldn’t think of a better thing to eat than a grilled cheese with his homemade bread. It was like putting those two together. Oh, so good.

RAJ SHAMANI: What did it taste like? Did it remind you of your father?

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Oh, yeah, yeah. Reminded me of my dad, of course, just because he ate grilled cheese all the time. And just… it was yummy because we don’t have really good bread. You know, we have little teeny loaves of bread up there and tortillas. And so having really good bread and having cheese, which is like a little bit of a luxury in space. We get it every now and then. But we don’t have it on a regular basis up there.

We have some canned cheese on the Russian side, but just every now and then we get a specialty like a chunk of cheese, but we don’t really have cheese all the time.

Memories of Her Father

RAJ SHAMANI: You were close to your father, right?

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Yeah. Yeah.

RAJ SHAMANI: What do you miss about him the most?

SUNITA WILLIAMS: I think I miss just going for a walk with him. That was always nice. I mean, he was one of these types of people who could really go for a walk and observe everything around him. And not that he’s talking about it all the time, but he might just stop you for a second and then tell you something and just, you know, just having a nice conversation with him.

RAJ SHAMANI: You’re so accomplished, you’ve done so many things and… and somebody asked you about your father and you said that your accomplishments are relatively way easier than your father. Like, your father is much more accomplished. Why did you say so?

A Father’s Legacy

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Oh, I absolutely believe that. You know, one, he did a lot of those things, his life, accomplishments in his life, on his own, like, just went out there and did it. I feel like I’ve been sort of guided by having a military career and then, you know, not necessarily being told, but like, hey, this is the opportunity, or this is what you’re supposed to be doing. And so I’m just doing things. And then some advice from some friends, like I mentioned, about becoming an astronaut.

That’s all just sort of—it seemed like it was easy and it was piled on each other. Not necessarily easy. I shouldn’t say it that way, but like, it was obvious when things became obvious. Whereas for my dad, I think about somebody making the decision, trying to make the decision, what do I want to do when I grow up? I have to—if I want to go to school, I have to have really good grades or I’m not going to get in school. You know, I want to go to medical school. It was very competitive. It is very competitive here in India. It’s competitive in the United States, too. But I would say more so here.

And he didn’t have his parents to help him or to guide him. He just decided he was going to do it and decided, like, this is how I have to live. I’m going to go to boarding school. I’m going to go to medical school. I’m going to somehow figure out a way to come to the United States and practice medicine there and see how that is and decide whether I’m coming back or going. And I mean, I have my brother over there, but that’s it. I don’t know what this journey is going to be like.

I mean, for us, we like, get on a plane and we go someplace around the globe or on a spacecraft. He had to get on a boat, that whole experience. And part of the reason he ate cheese was because the first time he ate cheese was on the ship that he was coming over here. He didn’t know what it was. He was like, what is this plasticky thing? So after that, he liked cheese, and then he ate grilled cheese because he didn’t really know what to make and how to make stuff when he came to the United States right away until he got some friends and gathered with them and then was able to make some other food. But grilled cheese was his go to, because it was easy. He knew it was vegetarian. It’s good.

RAJ SHAMANI: Do you still measure your success against his?

SUNITA WILLIAMS: No, I just—when people ask about it, I just think to myself, like, oh, gosh, don’t make such a big deal about it, because there’s other people who have done some incredible things and had to plan it out, do it all on their own. And so that’s why I feel like his accomplishments were so much more brave and courageous than mine.

RAJ SHAMANI: And you don’t take compliments well, do you?

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Well, I feel like I know myself, right? And I’m not extraordinary. I’m just somebody who has put their head down and done some stuff and didn’t take no for an answer. But I’m not extraordinary. And I say that because I think there’s many more young astronauts out there, and they’ll probably be doubting themselves at some points in time, and that’s okay, but they can do it. This is not an extraordinary feat.

RAJ SHAMANI: Wow, you’re extraordinary. I don’t know why you think that, you know, you’re extraordinary. And I’m sure, like, 99.99% people will feel about that. Oh, gosh, probably like 0.01% thinking, no, I—I’m serious.

SUNITA WILLIAMS: But I feel—I mean, I honestly feel this way. Like, if I could do these things, anybody could do this. I had a hard time in college. There was subjects in high school that I still had hard times with. You know, like, people are—they can do it. We’re smart. I mean, I think sometimes we just don’t tap our potential.

What His Father Wished to See

RAJ SHAMANI: Yeah, because you’re talking about your father. Always feel like I like asking these questions. I want to go ahead and ask you, what do you wish your father would have seen in you before he left?

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Oh, wow. I remember him saying one time, I’ll just—I don’t know if I’m going to answer your question exactly, but I remember him saying, I was after like my first flight or something, maybe my second flight. And we were talking about space. And he goes, “You know a lot about space.” And I said, “Dad, I know a lot about space because I live there. Like, of course I know a lot about space. I would say, you know a lot about Needham, Massachusetts. We grew up there.” So, like, it’s the same type of thing. Which was just sort of funny for me to have him say that, which was—and then we had a good laugh about it.

But I think, you know, it’s funny. I think after I became a test pilot and an astronaut, he was—we were, he was doing his life, I was doing my life after I graduated from college. So I don’t think he knew exactly, or my mom either, what I was doing. They all came to my test pilot school graduation and I think it was enlightening for them to see all of the aircraft that we were flying and what we were doing.

Because before that I was in the Navy and I was deploying and going away. And so I don’t think it was tangible because it was so out of like the realm of what folks in my family were doing at that time. Like exactly what we’re doing. But when they saw all the different aircraft and helicopters and heard a lot about that, I think both of my parents at that point in time were a little surprised that I went down that path. Like, they knew that was going on, but they really didn’t see it until that time because all the aircraft were there, all my classmates were there.

When I became an astronaut, I think there was a little bit of the same thing. It seems different from everything our family was doing. So it’s hard to really put your hands on it. But when they all went to my first launch to see a space shuttle launch out of Florida, I think that was an eye opening experience for everybody. Like, wow, this is serious. We launch on rockets.

My sister said such a funny thing. I called her once I got to the space station. I said, “What was your impression, most of you?” Because I like to hear what people have done. “What was it like?” She goes, “Oh, my God. It was nighttime launch too. Oh my God, there was so much fire.” I said, “Yeah, that’s what’s at the bottom of rockets, it’s fire. That’s how they go, you know?”

But it was—it’s funny because I think at that point in time, people realized what this is all about. And I think my father at the same time, figured out, like, wow, she’s actually going to space. And I think he was the one who gave me the Bhagavad Gita. He was the one who gave me the Upanishads on my second flight. And I think he was just like, you have a unique experience and stay grounded and live in the moment.

Carrying His Memory

RAJ SHAMANI: You carry Bhagavad Gita and Lord Ganesh still with you, right? Because your father gave it to you. So does it still feel the same or does it feel different now? Like when you carry Bhagavad Gita with you now when you—now that your father is not with you?

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Yep. Yeah. I mean, it’s a little piece of him is with it all, of course. I mean, that’s why I’m Indian, right? That’s why—because of him is, I think, a lot. At least half of my personality is because of him and understanding of the universe around us of him.

RAJ SHAMANI: What part of it feels different now since he’s not here?

SUNITA WILLIAMS: It seems like he’s part of all of that, which is sort of interesting thought process. I didn’t think about that before, but like, since he’s not with us, he’s part of all of that that you feel and you study is in the universe. He’s not here just to be, like, next to me to tell me about the plants and the trees and the birds. He’s part of all of that.

RAJ SHAMANI: Nice. And what specific trait you would say you inherited from your father? Is there any? Because you’ve said that you got your Slovenian stubbornness from your mother.

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Oh, yeah, you’ve heard it. Yeah, yeah. Yes. I think from my father, I’m very lucky to be—to have the ability to stop and just observe around me. I like this one picture Don Pettit took of me in the cupola because my friend Tracy took one that was like this, too. It’s nice to just have some moments of time. Not when you’re taking a picture or trying to do something, when you can just stop and look at what’s going on around you. I did not get that from my mom. My mom is very, very, very active, but my father had the ability to just be one with the world for a moment. Maybe it’s on a walk, but maybe it’s sometimes just hanging out.

RAJ SHAMANI: Did any part of you change after he’s gone?

SUNITA WILLIAMS: You know, I miss him physically because it’s always nice to just be able to talk to somebody. But at the same time, you know, his passing was very peaceful and I feel like he was ready to go. It’s funny, it was very interesting when he passed away. My sister and I were just coming in to see him, and he just passed and he was—I think he was just in a peaceful place because he was up and around maybe a half an hour before we were there. And so I think he was just sort of like, it’s my time to go to the next place and it’ll be okay. So that made us feel okay too.

RAJ SHAMANI: So when you carry Lord Ganesh with you, you said, like, it’s been your good luck charm. It’s been always there all around your house. You always carry it with you. Do you see your father in that energy now with Lord Ganesh?

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Not as a person. You know, like, it’s funny, like, I’m saying it was his time to leave and move on to the next thing, right? So I see that as part of who I am because of him. Yeah.

RAJ SHAMANI: But you don’t feel like there’s some invisibly, he’s watching you from somewhere?

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Oh, absolutely. I know he’s watching. Yeah. His spark is there. As he would say, his spark is there watching me all the time.

India from Space

RAJ SHAMANI: You know, because we are talking about a father and Lord Ganesh and Bhagavad Gita, I have to ask you the most obvious question is how does India look like from space?

Views of Earth from Space

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Yeah. So India is sometimes tricky to get a picture of because it’s a little bit hazy at times, but sometimes it’s awesome. So it just depends on one, the weather. But there’s now, and I don’t remember this from last flights, like a trail to come to see India, because there’s fishing boats in the Gulf of Arabia, off of the coast of India on the west side.

There’s different parts of different fishing boat sections in the world, but it’s definitely on the west coast of India. And it’s so weird because I thought to myself, how could these be fishing boats? How could I see a boat? There’s no way. Because, like, in the daytime, sometimes you can’t see the boat, but you can see the wake because the wake goes on for miles.

But they must have amazing lights. And for whatever reason, if they’re looking into the water or if they’re trying to attract fish or whatever they’re trying to do, I don’t know. But you can see these big plots of fishing boats all over the place. So that’s new for nighttime. And you can see that coming in.

And then at night, which is India’s pretty spectacular because the cities are lit up. It’s white lights. And all those lights seems to be connected. It’s almost like when I see it, I think of nerves, like pictures people have of when they tell you there’s a nerve problem and these nerves are connected. India is like that. It’s very connected with lights at night. So that was one big impression this time that I didn’t remember from last time.

More so looking at India in the daytime. And the colors are amazing. The Himalayas are absolutely amazing. And you can sort of see where, like I’ve said this before, it feels like where the plates bumped up into each other and made the mountains.

And then the coast is obviously cool because you can see, particularly on the east side when the rivers run off, how they interact with the water on that side, the different colors and swirls from that side. And then at one point in time, I took a picture of the interaction between India and Sri Lanka.

RAJ SHAMANI: Yeah.

SUNITA WILLIAMS: And it seems like there’s a connection there. I’ll just say that. I think that picture took. There was a little bit of a discussion about that picture. But, yeah, it looks like there is. You know, they absolutely could be connected.

RAJ SHAMANI: Yeah, there must be some.

SUNITA WILLIAMS: There’s something there.

RAJ SHAMANI: There’s something connected. We leave it out there.

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Yeah, yeah, leave it at that.

Strange Sights in Orbit

RAJ SHAMANI: And when you look out of the window, okay, this is my sci-fi brain talking. Okay. So just don’t doubt me on this question, but I’m still going to be. What’s the strangest thing you’ve seen in the space which you think is going to be hard to believe for people here?

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Oh, interesting. Two different things that were different or have been different. There’s a lot of communication satellites up there now, Starlinks. And so you can. This time from 10 years ago, they fly across the view. Like, you see the stars, of course, as they’re coming, but they fly across the view, which is like, whoa, where did these all come from?

And which is great because there’s a lot of communication now on Earth because we have these constellations of satellites. But there is. It was an impression, like, there is a lot of stuff in orbits around the planet.

The other thing, which was really cool this time, and we were able. It’s hard to see with the naked eye, but we have some really great cameras and we were able to take pictures. Not me in particular, but Don Pettit and Matt Dominic of blue jets and red sprites coming out of a thundercloud. Like energy coming up. It’s out there because Nicole Ayers took some after we left, too. And I think those are posted. Just amazing that we were able to take pictures of energy coming out of a thundercloud and out of lightning.

RAJ SHAMANI: Wow.

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Yeah, that was pretty amazing. So there’s just. And I had no idea those things existed. People knew they were existing, but it was hard to actually document it. And now the cameras that we have, we can document that. So all of that is pretty amazing.

Don was able to also with his camera, because these are things you can see. You can see the Milky Way. Like, it’s amazing to see so many billions of stars out there. But he was. And it’s hard to take good pictures, pinpoint pictures of stars, because we’re moving so fast. He rigged up with a little gearbox, something to copy the orbital rate as we were flying, so he could pinpoint the pictures of. Pinpoint the stars. And then the lights on the Earth were a little bit blurred. That’s backwards of how normal cameras or normal setups would do it.

So those pictures are out there also from Don Pettit, if anybody gets a moment to take a look on the Internet. Incredible pictures. So I had the luxury of being up there with some amazing photographers that were able to do that.

Life Beyond Earth

RAJ SHAMANI: Do you believe there’s some life out there?

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Absolutely. With those billions of stars out there, you know, we’re just a little planet around one star. So, yeah, there’s life out there. I mean, there’s life on Earth in places we never thought there could be. Right at the bottom of the ocean with the thermal vents that are coming up, there’s light. Things that live without great pressure, without light in the darkness.

So yes, and strange gases that we found. Actually, on our second spacewalk, Butch did some swabbing on the outside of the spacecraft. There’s microbes that live on the outside of the space station. Yes, they’re probably from us because they’re in the vicinity of where there’s some gas vents whenever we vent overboard. So, sure, they probably came from us because they’re right there.

But what it proves to us is something can live in the vacuum of space with the heating and cooling. So that’s more proof in the pudding that something could live out there even as close as the moons of Jupiter, thinking that one of them, at least Europa, I think it is, has water on it. It’d be nice to drop a spacecraft over there and drop a rover through the ice and see what’s going on. And there’s some plans to do that as well.

But if there’s water, there’s probably something. There’s obviously evidence of water on the moon and on Mars or some type of liquid. Right. So there might have been something on Mars at least that we could potentially go see if we go there.

RAJ SHAMANI: So do you think there’s some species around there?

SUNITA WILLIAMS: There might be. Who knows? Who knows? We have to go and see.

RAJ SHAMANI: You believe in the possibility, but you don’t know?

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I don’t think it’s humans, for example, but there’s some type of some forms of life potentially fantastic, but potentially.

The Most Beautiful Thing in Space

RAJ SHAMANI: I’ve, like, last two, three questions for you. And one of them is, tell me the most beautiful thing you.

SUNITA WILLIAMS: I mean, I really think the aurora, one of the really huge benefits of us being up there all of the summer of 2024 this year also, or last year in 2025, but we weren’t there, thankfully. But in 2024 this summer, we had some incredible aurora because of solar activity and such that the aurora came down.

Usually you look out the window and you can see it over there. Like you’re looking and like, oh, my God, that’s amazing. Look at it. It’s so great. We’re taking pictures out the side so you can sort of see. This time we flew essentially through the aurora. It was low enough. Our orbit’s 51.6 degrees, so it came down somewhere in that vicinity.

And it was amazing. Like, not only what you typically see of green lights, but you also. We also saw pinks and then some purple, which means, you know, that was stronger and there was interacting with other elements in the vicinity of our magnetic field.

So pretty impressive and humbling when you think about it. First time I saw aurora was on my first flight on a spacewalk, and it was below me and I was like, whoa. You know, thinking like, the energy that’s out there in the universe is just incredible. And something that we could. We worry about energy here on this planet all the time, but there’s more out there that we could never even think about harnessing. So how do we. How would we do that? Right. It’s amazing. So that it was just mindboggling and incredible. Yeah.

RAJ SHAMANI: Interesting.

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Yeah.

Exploring in Their Memory

RAJ SHAMANI: Before you set a foot on your first flight, you saw what happened with Kalpana Chawla and then she’s. She was an incredible moment. Absolutely inspiration for all.

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Role model. Yes.

RAJ SHAMANI: Yeah. Like, she was. She’s a friend of yours. She’s a role model. And you saw her death. Did that event change anything you or the way you look at death and life? Because you were taking the same kind of path. She’s a friend and she’s a role model. She’s the first Indian American woman to do all of these things. And you’re going to be the next. So did that change anything you about death?

SUNITA WILLIAMS: I think not about death, but about the. I think the desire to explore more. I know that her and her crewmates, you know, that was in their heart. I mean, they were doing some really fundamental science to help us with the space station and understand how we do how the these work so we can do even more incredible experiments while we’re up there and then continue this fact of us being able to live for longer in space and then how we can move on.

I mean, I knew all of them and a couple of them very well. Really good friends. And not only Kalpana, but that was like what was in their hearts. You know, Dave Brown was a really good friend. Probably one of the reasons I came to NASA was because I knew him a long time beforehand. And he was one of those people who was like, Suni, this job is for sure.

So I knew in his heart, I know in Kalpana’s heart that this is what they wanted to do. So I think it gave us even more of a feeling of like, we really want to continue this. We’ve got to do this in their memory. And same with Challenger. And that’s why we continue to fly the space shuttle after Challenger. Like, we can do this and we can do this better and we’re going to learn more about this. We’re not going to let their situation put a stop on it. They wouldn’t want that.

So we’re just going to. We’re going to press harder. And I think we all know that there’s risks involved in this, but we’ve learned so much from each misstep. I would say we learned from Challenger. We learned, of course, we learned from Apollo 1, first and foremost. The Russians have learned a lot of things from Soyuz issues as well. We’ve learned from Challenger, we’ve learned from Columbia, we’ve learned from Starliner.

I mean, one of the, like, I think the best things about Starliner is some of those thrusters are on other spacecraft. How do we. Now we need to understand a little bit more about the, and make those spacecraft better and what are the questions we didn’t ask. And we can ask those questions for the next spacecraft that we’re going to fly. So it didn’t scare me. It got me ready, ready to go and happy to explore in their name.

Ready for Launch

RAJ SHAMANI: And so when you’re strapping yourself on the rocket in that moment, are you super optimistic or you are going with the thought that you’re prepared to die? Whatever happens, we’ll take care.

SUNITA WILLIAMS: I think we’re not super optimistic and not prepared to die. Neither one of those things I think we’re ready for. I mean, it was sort of like, come on, it’s like a game, right? It’s sort of like at the beginning of a football match, right? And everybody’s pumped up and they’re ready to take on the responsibility of whatever action is going to happen, right? They’re ready.

I think that’s how we felt at least, you know, Butch and I getting into. We’re ready for this. We’re ready. Let’s go. We know, we know what we can handle. We know what we’re supposed to do. Like, let’s just, let’s go. Bring it on.

RAJ SHAMANI: There’s no other thought?

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Yeah, no, no, it’s.

RAJ SHAMANI: When you do this VR in that, do you see yourself maybe never coming back or doing something or. No, you’re just never thought, oh, no.

The VR Training That Left a Lasting Impression

SUNITA WILLIAMS: There’s a VR thing that we do for this backpack that we have on the back for our spacewalks, right? That is to me scary because, you know, you have to practice a little bit to figure out how to fly with the orbital mechanics to get yourself back to the space station. And when you’re learning this, for me, I wasn’t a natural right from the get go. I figured it out and I have a plan.

But the first time I did it, you know, I think I missed the space station by like inches. And you can’t do anything because you’re out of gas and like, ah. And you float away and that would be bad. It leaves an impression on, left an impression on me.

Like you’re just sitting here with goggles on and you’re sweating because you’re working, trying to figure out how to solve this problem and nervous that you’re going to float away, such that there’s just probably 99.9% I will never get myself in that situation. I can’t say 100%, but whenever I got to a work site, a tether down, a second tether down, okay, now I can take my hands off.

Like, it left such an impression that you would really never want to get yourself in that situation. Like, I don’t ever want to have this happen to me. Never.

RAJ SHAMANI: So the last question is, what’s one question you wish people would have asked you?

People Are Good: The Biggest Lesson From Space

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Oh. So my biggest takeaway from this flight was really not… There’s lots of technical things that we learned, right? Like I just mentioned that we could pass on and make the next flight better or make the hardware better, ask the right questions, maybe do the engineering process better. Right. All of that is huge lessons learned.

But the biggest lesson learned is when I came back. And again, we could talk about the press and how maybe the narrative was a little blown out of proportion in my perspective, but people would be like, “I’m so glad you came back.” People I don’t know. I don’t know even what country they’re from. I don’t know what nationality they are. I don’t know what ethnicity they are. I don’t know religion. I don’t know what politics they there.

From all over the world, we’re like, “I’m so happy you’re back. You know, welcome home. Thankfully, we’re praying for you. We were thinking about you,” whatever, you know. And my overall lesson learned from this is like, people are good. People are nice. And as human beings, we care about each other.

And it seems like that gets lost with a lot of distractions and noise that are going around, and we just need to listen to each other because people are good.

RAJ SHAMANI: Does it get you overwhelmed when you talk about this?

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Bums me out a little bit because I had to go through this process to see that. And that’s why I keep talking about it, because I hope that other people don’t have to go through a process. I hope we would just stop and listen to each other and realize how good human beings are.

RAJ SHAMANI: I can see your eyes getting teared up.

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Yeah. No, human beings care about each other, and we forget that. We fight over stupid things, which is unfortunate.

RAJ SHAMANI: Well, thank you so much for doing this. It is an honor to speak to you, but it was incredibly good. Thank you so much for doing this.

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Thank you so much. Then thanks to your team. You guys are very patient.

Closing Conversation

RAJ SHAMANI: Do you read? What do you usually read?

SUNITA WILLIAMS: I have read just mostly technical stuff. More recently the last 10 years of my life have sort of been all consumed by this flight, commercial crew. So I haven’t had a lot of just nice reading. I’m reading a funny little book right now about… I got it this gift from Slovenia about weird little Slovenian things which is fun.

But I actually more so like, what is it called? Like fictional history.

RAJ SHAMANI: Which book were you reading? I’m interested in this.

SUNITA WILLIAMS: Like about Einstein and then there were some other ones, but I haven’t read them for a little while. But anyway, I like reading about the people.

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