Sirisha Bandla, the woman who is breaking boundaries beyond earth

From the rice fields of Guntur in Andhra Pradesh to a journey to the edge of space, 34-year-old Sirisha Bandla will not only fulfill her childhood dream on Sunday but create history opening a whole new world for commercial space travel.

Born in Guntur to Muralidhar and Anuradha Bandla, Sirisha spent her early childhood in the region known for its braided stream channels created by the Krishna and other smaller rivers before joining her parents in Houston, Texas—the hub of American space activities.

"I was always one of those kids that wanted to be an astronaut and go into space, and that’s something that I never grew out of," Sirisha said in an interview to Space Times, a journal of the American Astronautical Society last year.

However, her dream of being an astronaut or a pilot was cut short because of bad eyesight. But the first crewed private spaceflight powered by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen funded SpaceShipOne in 2004 helped Sirisha pursue her passion.

Read | Indian-origin aeronautical engineer Sirisha Bandla all set to lift off to space on Sunday

"From there on I decided to become an aerospace engineer, so I could hopefully align myself with the growing commercial space sector," she said.

On Sunday, July 11, Sirisha along with her boss Richard Branson and four others are set to travel to space onboard Virgin Galactic’s spaceflight Unity22.

"When I first heard I was getting this opportunity, I was speechless," she said in a video released by Virgin Galactic on July 5.

According to Virgin Galactic, the ‘Unity 22’ mission will be the twenty-second flight test for VSS Unity and the first to carry a full crew of two pilots and four mission specialists in the cabin, including the company’s founder, Richard Branson, who will be testing the private astronaut experience.

Twitterati in India have already raised the toast to "Mana-ammayi-Modati Telugu ammayi" (Our girl-First Telugu girl) venturing to the edge of space.

"She is my granddaughter! Sirisha was fearless since childhood and had a keen interest in space. I wish her all the best. She grew up with us in Tenali till she was five," said Dr Bandla Ragaiah, Sirisha’s paternal grandfather, beaming with pride.

Also Read | Meet 'Mana-ammayi' Sirisha Bandla, all set to become second Indian-born woman to go to space

Sirisha completed her Bachelor of Science in Aerospace, Aeronautical, and Astronautical Engineering in 2011 from Purdue University and went on to do her MBA from George Washington University in 2015.

She joined Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic after completing her studies and is currently the Vice President of Government Affairs at the British-American spaceflight company.

Her passion for the space sector has seen her rise from intern designing components of advanced aircraft at L-3 Communications in Texas to joining Commercial Spaceflight Federation, an industry association, as Associate Director to her current position in Virgin Galactic in less than a decade.

"I am so incredibly honored 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," Sirisha said on July 2, a day after the announcement.

Sirisha’s pitch for opening up space travel for all puts the spotlight on the scarce representation of women in space missions.

Over the past 50 years, nearly 600 persons have undertaken missions in space of which barely 65 were women, despite Valentina Tereshkova becoming the first woman to travel to space in 1963.

Also Read | What Sirisha Bandla's grandfather said about her space mission

Among Sirisha’s co-travelers would be Beth Moses, the first female commercial astronaut on Virgin Galactic’s flight test in February 2019.

"Women and people of colour you don’t often see… I don’t often see students that look like myself in this industry just yet," she said in an interaction with the Matthew Isakowitz Fellowship, a program that helps college students enter the commercial spaceflight industry.

Sirisha is one of the coordinators for the fellowship set up in the memory of aerospace engineer Isakowitz, who helped her understand space policy.

Indians across the world would be closely tracking Sirisha’s travel to the edge of space on Sunday. The two spacecraft would climb together to an altitude just below 50,000 feet when the mothership release Unity whose rockets would take it to an altitude of approximately 3,00,000 feet above the earth. Sixteen cameras inside the cabin will capture every moment of the experience in HD. Sirisha will be the second India-born woman to travel to outer space after Kalpana Chawla.