After Kalpna Chawla, Sunita Williams, 41 will be the second woman of Indian origin to take off on a space mission.

She will spend six months at the International Space Station. The US shuttle Discovery will leave Sunita there after completing a 12-day repair job.

Sunita has been arrived at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for a final stretch of training and preparations.

On Friday, the shuttle mission, STS-116 will be launched.

The spaceflight has been scheduled to blast off at 8:05 IST on Friday. Its five among the seven members have never flown in space before.

The crew mission commander Mark Polansky, pilot William Oefelein, mission specialists Joan Higginbotham, Nicholas Patrick, lead spacewalker Bob Curbeam, the European Space Agency`s Christer Fuglesang and NASA’s Sunita Williams are the crew members of the spaceflight.

Sunita described the mission and its crew members as most culturally diverse space shuttle crew. She said in a pre-flight interview published by NASA that

I am half Indian and I have got a, I am sure, a group of Indian people who are looking forward to seeing this second person of Indian origin, flying up in space.

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