Meet Sirisha Bandla, Third Indian-Origin Woman to Explore Space

Sirisha Bandla, after Kalpana Chawla and Sunita Williams, became the third woman of Indian descent to fly into space.

Sirisha Bandla, 34, accomplished this milestone when she launched into space on Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity for an hour and a half expedition above New Mexico.

Bandla flew from New Mexico with Richard Branson, a British billionaire on Virgin Galactic's first suborbital test flight which was fully crewed. 

With this voyage, the British billionaire became the first of the pioneer of new space tourism to test their own vehicles, surpassing Amazon's Jeff Bezos and SpaceX's Elon Musk. 

Sirisha Bandla was the No 004 astronaut, and her voyage assignment was Researcher Experience.

"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 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 tweeted.

Sirisha was born at the home of her maternal grandmother in Chirala. The family later relocated to Tenali, Guntur.

She then flew to Houston to join her parents in the United States. Sirisha's parents, who work for the US government, are now stationed in India.

Sirisha is the vice president of government affairs for Virgin Galactic. It is said that she was always dazed in admiration for the space which she so dearly wanted to explore.

Sirisha, Kalpana Chawla and Sunita Williams are the only Indian-origin woman to have ventured out into the space, whereas

Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma remains the sole Indian to have been in space. On April 3, 1984, the former pilot of the Indian Air Force travelled aboard Soyuz T-11 as part of the Soviet Interkosmos programme. 

Bandla immigrated to the United States at the tender age of four years and received a Bachelor's Degree in Science from Purdue University's School of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 2011. In 2015, she received her Master of Business Administration from George Washington University.

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