Indian-American astronaut Sunita Williams, who holds the longest spaceflight record (195 days) for female space travellers, will head for the stars once again in June 2012.
Ms Williams, 44, will take over as station commander at the International Space Station that was her home from December 9, 2006 to June 22, 2007. She will be joined on the Soyuz-31 flight to the space station by flight engineers Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malen-chenko and Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, the space agencies of the three nations announced Friday. She is the daughter of Gujarat-born neuroanatomist Deepak Pandya and Slovak mother Bonnie Pandya.
On her last space trip, Ms Williams had carried a copy of the Bhagavad Gita, a small Ganesh figurine and some samosas. —IANS