Sunita Williams, who spent months stranded at the International Space Station last year, has officially retired. Her retirement, confirmed by NASA, took effect at the end of December. In 2024, she became
one of the first astronauts to travel aboard Boeing’s new Starliner crew capsule. What was meant to be a week-long mission unexpectedly stretched to over nine months due to technical issues with the spacecraft. Currently visiting India, Sunita often spoke about her roots and her connection to her father, Deepak Pandya, who grew up in Gujarat.
She has shared how thinking about the place her father grew up in and his influence gave her comfort while in space. Let’s take a closer look at who Deepak Pandya was.
Who Is Sunita Williams’ Father?
Deepak Pandya, born and raised in Jhulasan in Gujarat, completed his Intermediate Science at Gujarat University in 1953, followed by earning an MD in 1957, before moving to the United States for further medical training. In 1964, he joined the Department of Anatomy at Case Western Reserve University as a postdoctoral fellow and later worked at several well known institutions across the US. During his early years in America, Pandya met Ursuline Bonnie Zalokar, a Slovenian-American and the couple got married.
During the Delhi event, she said, “I was a little bit smarter since I was number three. All of us had the opportunity to go with my father to his laboratory on the weekends. I was the youngest, so I sort of got to go a lot more and see what he was doing and he did neuroscience research. I think we’re also one of the strange families that had drawings of brains on our dining room table because he was always hand drawing the brain and identifying where the neurons were interacting. It has to make you wonder, like, what is this all about? What are we doing? Right? So uh my father was pretty amazing, a neuroscientist and a doctor and we all understood that with a little bit of hard work, we could actually maybe understand what he was doing.”
Sunita Williams Journey
In a press release by NASA, Sunita Williams said, “Anyone who knows me knows that space is my absolute favourite place to be. It’s been an incredible honour to have served in the Astronaut Office and have had the opportunity to fly in space three times. I had an amazing 27-year career at NASA, and that is mainly because of all the wonderful love and support I’ve received from my colleagues. The International Space Station, the people, the engineering, and the science are truly awe-inspiring and have made the next steps of exploration to the Moon and Mars possible. I hope the foundation we set has made these bold steps a little easier. I am super excited for NASA and its partner agencies as we take these next steps, and I can’t wait to watch the agency make history.”
As per the space agency, Williams flew on three missions to the International Space Station. In total, she spent 608 days in space, which is the second highest for any NASA astronaut. She went on nine spacewalks, which is equivalent to spending over 62 hours outside the spacecraft. Williams also made history by running a full marathon while in space.
Sunita Williams first went to space in 2006 aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery and later became the commander of the ISS during Expedition 33. Her most recent mission, in 2024-2025, was on the Boeing Starliner and SpaceX Crew 9, where she led Expedition 72.
