Just retired NASA astronaut Sunita Williams on Thursday said the upcoming Moon mission under the Artemis programme would give her “FOMO”, even as she finds joy in rediscovering Earth and the places she once viewed from orbit.
Speaking on the inaugural evening of the Kerala Literature Festival (KLF), Williams reflected on her 27-year career, the awe of seeing Earth from space, the teamwork behind the International Space Station (ISS), and the simple pleasures she missed during her long stints in orbit.
"Who doesn't want to go to the Moon... That was the whole reason I wanted to join NASA in the first place. So yes, of course, I will have FOMO (fear of missing out), but I am also excited to see my friends do this, to see my fellow human beings take this step," Williams said during a session titled Dreams Reach Orbit.
NASA is preparing to launch Artemis II, its first crewed Moon mission since 1972, with four astronauts scheduled to orbit the Moon in 2026.
Now retired, the 60-year-old said she plans to fill her time travelling and reconnecting with life on Earth. "I have also discovered some really great places on Earth that I hadn't visited when I was in space. I have to fill my time, and I plan to do so by travelling all around -- Kerala is one of them," she told the packed venue.
Over a stellar career, Williams logged 608 days in space — the second highest for a NASA astronaut — and shared the sixth-longest single American spaceflight of 286 days with Butch Wilmore during NASA’s Starliner and Crew-9 missions. She has completed nine spacewalks totalling 62 hours and 6 minutes, the most by a woman and the fourth-highest cumulative spacewalk time overall.
Despite these achievements, Williams downplayed her feats, describing them as part of the job, including a mission that was meant to last eight days but stretched into a nine-month ordeal after technical issues with Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft.
Recalling the tense moments when five of the spacecraft’s 20 thrusters failed during docking at the ISS, she said fear never overtook her confidence in training and teamwork. "The act of fear really never entered my head. What entered my head was the trust I had in the people on the ground, the trust I had in my friend and colleague Butch Wilmore, who was sitting right next to me, and the trust he had in me — and how we were going to solve this problem," Williams said.
Yet, she admitted that life in space came with deep emotional costs. While she stayed connected with family through video calls and followed news from Earth, she missed the physical sensations of home — rain, wind, sand — and especially her dogs.
"I look at our planet, and not only do I feel the heartbeat of all the people, family, and friends I know, but also the animals that I love. It’s amazing to see them in action here on our planet. This is our planet where they live, where the fish swim, where all the trees grow. And not being able to be part of that... that was deeply painful," she said.
Born on September 19, 1965, in Euclid, Ohio, to a Gujarati father from Jhulasan in Gujarat’s Mehsana district and a Slovenian mother, Williams also thanked India for embracing her as one of its own. Recalling her first mission, she said she initially doubted her father’s claim that people across India were praying for her safe return.
"I said to him, 'I don't believe you. This can't happen.' And then, when I came home, I actually saw newspaper articles, and I realized it was true. A friend of mine was in the Himalayas at an elementary school and told me, 'Oh my gosh, your picture is at the school.' "I was like, wow. This is so heartfelt, so warming to me, that I have been taken as a daughter of India," she said.
Williams first flew into space aboard shuttle Discovery in December 2006 and returned with Atlantis in 2007. She later launched from Kazakhstan’s Baikonur Cosmodrome in 2012 for a 127-day mission and went on to serve as commander of the ISS during Expedition 33.
The four-day Kerala Literature Festival, now in its ninth edition, is hosting more than 400 speakers, including Nobel laureates Abdulrazak Gurnah and Abhijit Banerjee, authors Kiran Desai and Shashi Tharoor, historian Romila Thapar, essayist Pico Iyer, sports icons Rohan Bopanna and Ben Johnson, and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. KLF 2026 will conclude on January 25.