“From space, borders disappear ” says Sunita Williams at Kerala Literature Festival

Veteran NASA astronaut and spaceflight icon Sunita Williams received a rousing welcome as guest of honour at the Kerala Literature Festival, where she spoke candidly about her 27-year career in space exploration, the emotional toll of long missions, the near-crisis during her recent docking at the International Space Station, and why seeing Earth from space deepened both her faith in humanity and her belief in science. Visibly moved by the crowd, Williams said she was “humbled and overwhelmed” by the affection she continues to receive in India, recalling how prayers were held across the country during her delayed return from space. “I’ve been taken as a daughter of India,” she said. “I feel at home here.” During the wide-ranging conversation, Williams reflected on her three missions to the ISS, which together added up to nearly 600 days in space and nine spacewalks — the most by any woman in history. Now officially retired, she described the timing of her India visit as “poetic,” allowing her to pass on the message of possibility to young people just as her spacefaring chapter closes. “I think the greatest compliment is when the next generation does the job better than you,” she said, adding that inspiring children to believe “even the sky is not the limit” mattered more to her than records. One of the most gripping moments of the session came when Williams detailed the technical failure during her recent mission, when five thrusters malfunctioned as her spacecraft approached the space station — turning an eight-day mission into a stay of over nine months. “We practiced emergencies for years, but we didn’t anticipate a systemic failure,” she said. “Fear never entered my head — what entered my head was trust. Trust in mission control, trust in my colleague Butch Wilmore, and trust that we would solve it one step at a time.” She described rebooting the thrusters individually with engineers on the ground guiding every move, explaining that astronauts are trained not only technically but psychologically to handle crisis without panic. “Big problems are solved in small steps,” she said. Despite the uncertainty of their extended stay, Williams insisted that the hardest part was not physical discomfort but the emotional strain of not knowing when she would return home and watching colleagues lose their chance to fly because seats were needed for her and Wilmore. “That broke my heart,” she admitted. “Someone had trained for years for their first mission and had to step aside. That’s when I felt — it’s okay to let the younger generation take over now.” Williams also addressed the intense media speculation that followed the malfunction, saying miscommunication had fuelled fear around the world. “There were hundreds of people working on solutions, but the information wasn’t coming out clearly,” she said. “It became a lesson in how critical proper communication is.” On concerns about the physical impact of spending more than nine months in microgravity, Williams reassured audiences that rigorous daily exercise and medical monitoring kept long-term damage minimal. “I lost about one per cent bone density in my hip — and that’s recoverable,” she said, adding that fitness is “a way of life, whether on Earth or in space.” Beyond science and engineering, Williams spoke movingly about the emotional experience of orbiting Earth — from floating weightlessly “like a child doing spins” to crying every time she had to leave space, unsure if she would ever return. “You look out and see Earth as a single living, breathing planet,” she said. “You miss rain on your face, wind, sand under your feet — the small things that make life human.” That perspective, she said, also shaped her spiritual outlook. Carrying a Ganesha idol and the Bhagavad Gita into space, she argued that science and spirituality are not opposites. “When you see the miracle of this planet from above, it makes you believe there’s something greater. Science explains how — spirituality makes you feel the wonder.” Asked which country looks the most beautiful from space, Williams smiled and said borders vanish from that height. “You see coastlines, rivers, mountains — but not divisions,” she said, noting that India stood out at night with its interconnected lights and glowing fishing boats along the coast. “It looks like a network of life.” Throughout the session, she repeatedly returned to the theme of teamwork — crediting engineers, scientists and mission controllers across countries for every success in space. “Exploration only works when humans work together,” she said, pointing to the International Space Station as proof that global cooperation is possible even when politics on Earth are fractured. As humanity prepares for the next chapter of lunar exploration under NASA’s Artemis programme, Williams admitted to feeling “absolute FOMO” about not being part of the mission. “Of course I’d love to go to the Moon,” she laughed. “But it’s time to cheer for the next generation.” Closing the session, she left the audience with a message shaped by both crisis and wonder: that human beings are smarter, kinder and more capable than they often believe. “When people say something can’t be done, don’t believe them,” she said. “If we’re given a problem, we will figure it out — together.”