Indian American astronaut Sunita Williams, on a week-long visit to Gujarat, on Saturday advised students to study space science for the exciting opportunities it offers and light-heartedly challenged them to break the space walk records she created this year.

Speaking at a felicitation programme in her honour by Gujarat University, Sunita said space science was increasingly concerned with making the earth safe from the “effects of vacuum, a darkness that is beyond black and the massive temperature deviations in space”.

The research on how to protect planet earth from such effects could possibly be conducted from the Moon and even Mars, she told a large gathering of university students.

“This means many opportunities for all of you in space research. Take it as a challenge. Break my records and take my place,” she said to resounding applause from the audience. Sunita, whose father hails from Gujarat, arrived here Thursday morning. There have been a series of felicitations for the astronaut who created new records earlier this year in space walk by a woman and longest stay in space.

Before the felicitation, Williams, sporting a blue space suit, interacted with the first batch of students of the postgraduate course in space science, a discipline introduced by the university recently.