Williams returned after a record 194-day stay in space as space shuttle Atlantis touched down at the Edwards Air Force Base in California on Friday.

There were scenes of celebration and jubilation at Williams’ ancestral home in India’s western Ahmedabad city where her extended family stays.

Williams’ relatives and friends broke into cheers and hugged each other after watching the TV channels broadcast images of the Atlantis making a text-book landing at the base.

“It feels great, absolutely great. It feels like I have won. Even better than if I had done it. We are very happy that Sunita has returned safely,” Williams’ uncle, Vitthal Pandya told the NDTV network.

“It gives me tears of joy. We are very proud of her. She has shown that she can do anything and that women can achieve anything,” he said.

The ecstatic father of Williams, Deepak Pandya, thanked India for all the support through Sunita’s space sojourn.

“On behalf of all our family we would like to thank everybody for making her journey quite comfortable and for her to achieve success,” Pandya, who was in New Jersey told Times Now TV over telephone.

Williams has become a national icon with Indians proud that she broke several records during her space journey. Over the past few days, newspapers and TV channels have been following the scheduled landing of the Atlantis as their lead news item.

Born on Sept. 19, 1965 to an Indian immigrant and an American mother, Williams has set a record for women in space by spending six months on the International Space Station.

Williams is not the first astronaut of Indian origin who generated such feelings in her native country.

NASA astronaut Kalpana Chawla, who was born in the northern Indian town of Karnal, made history with her first space flight in 1997.

But Chawla was killed on her second space mission in the Columbia shuttle disaster of early 2003 when the shuttle broke up and disintegrated on returning to Earth.

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