As Indian-American astronaut Sunita Williams took off for her second space journey early on Sunday, her father says he is less anxious this time around. "Sunita is used to life in a space station," says Deepak Pandya. The 80-year-old, originally from Gujarat, is a renowned neuroanatomist - his path-breaking research focuses on the link between human brain and diseases.A US naval officer, Williams, 46, took off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan with flight engineers Yuri Malenchenko of the Russian Federal Space Agency and Akihiko Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, NASA said in a statement. The three will join the Expedition 32 crew aboard the International Space Station on Tuesday."This time she will be involved in experiments dealing with survival of long-duration flights for distant space travel," Pandya tells ET. Williams travelled for the first time to space in 2007 and, according to NASA, she holds three records for a female space traveler - longest spaceflight (195 days), number of spacewalks (four) and total time spent on spacewalks (29 hours and 17 minutes).Williams was quoted as saying in the media that she is excited about watching the London Summer Olympics from the station and put a much more global perspective on the mega sporting event beginning July 27. Williams, a flight engineer on the station's Expedition 32 crew, will take over as commander of Expedition 33 on reaching the space station.Williams, whose mother Bonnie Pandya is from Slovenia, grew up in Massachusetts, US. Pandya, who did his MD from Gujarat University before relocating to the US: "She grew up like all (my) other children. (The) only difference is that she has been a very motivated and disciplined person from childhood." Williams is the second woman of Indian origin to have been selected by NASA for a space mission after Kalpana Chawla , who was killed in the space shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003.Williams had carried with her a copy of the Bhagavad Gita and an idol of Lord Ganesha in her 2007 space journey. "She has always been a spiritual person. She has a background of Christian and Hindu religions. She respects all people and their religious beliefs," says Pandya.About Williams' disclosure that she wanted to adopt a child from Gujarat, Pandya would only say that "she has been thinking to adopt a child for some time". He adds, "But first, she has to accomplish her present mission." She is married to a US police officer, Michael J Williams, for more than 20 years.Deepak Pandya, who lives in Boston, is a physician who has practiced medicine for several years. He has taught at Boston University and at the Harvard University School of Medicine. Even at 80, he continues to work."My research work deals with outlining the connections of the brain. I have worked on monkey brain because monkey brain resembles the human brain. Lately, with newer imaging techniques we have been exploring the connections in the human brain. Our research aims at finding the mechanisms behind the brain function and understanding the disease process," he says.