Sirisha Bandla becomes 3rd Indian-American woman to fly into space

Aeronautical engineer Sirisha Bandla on Sunday became the third Indian-American woman to fly into space when she joined British billionaire Richard Branson on Virgin Galactic’s first fully-crewed successful suborbital test flight from the US state of New Mexico. Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity, as the spaceplane is called, took off for the 1.5-hour mission above New Mexico following a 90-minute delay due to bad weather.

Bandla joined Branson and five others on board Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo Unity to make a journey to the edge of space from New Mexico. They reached an altitude of about 88 kilometers over the New Mexico desert – enough to see the curvature of the Earth. The crew experienced a few minutes of weightlessness before making a gliding descent back to Earth. “I am so incredibly honoured to be a part of the amazing crew of #Unity22, and to be a part of a company whose mission is to make space available to all,” 34-year-old Bandla tweeted days before the flight. “When I first heard that I was getting this opportunity, it was just… I was speechless. I think that probably captured it very well. This is an incredible opportunity to get people from different backgrounds, different geographies, and different communities into space,” she said in a video posted on the Twitter handle of Virgin Galactic on July 6. The primary objective for Unity 22 was to serve as a test flight for future commercial passenger flights by Virgin Galactic.

Bandla, who was born in Guntur district in Andhra Pradesh and brought up in Houston, was astronaut No 004 and her flight role was Researcher Experience. She became the third Indian-origin woman to fly into space after Kalpana Chawla and Sunita Williams. Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma is the only Indian citizen to travel in space.