Indian Origin Women Who Travelled to Space

By: WE Staff | Monday, 19 July 2021

Women in STEM have played and continue to play an important role in how we investigate the universe and what it has to offer. Recently as Virgin Galactic'sSpaceShipTwo Unity took flight, the whole world watched in awe. What was exciting for several Indian women and women across the globe was the inclusion of SirishaBandla in the crew that was to take flight. As visuals came in of a smiling and excited Bandla, we all travelled to space vicariously. This development is testament to the fact that women are making up the past, present, and future of space travel.

Let us look at the Indian origin women who have set the records by going beyond the final frontier and flying into the sky.

Sirisha Bandla (born 22 January 1988; age 33) is an Indian-American Astronaut, Popular Media Face, Manager, and Internet sensation. Her name was heard everywhere following the announcement that she is one of the members who will fly to space in July 2021 as part of Virgin Galactic's first fully crewed flight.

She enrolled at Purdue University in 2006 after completing her basic education at a local school in Texas. In 2011, she received her Bachelor of Science in Aeronautical, Aerospace, and Astronautical Engineering.

She has also served as a manager in a number of organizations. She has been working at Virgin Galactic since 2017 and has now been given the opportunity to travel to space with the company's founder and other members.In January 2021, she began her position as Vice President of Government Affairs and Research Operations at Virgin Galactic.

Bandla, who was born in the Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh and raised in Houston, Texas, travelled to the edge of space with Sir Richard Branson, the company's billionaire founder, and five others aboard Virgin Galactic'sSpaceShipTwo Unity from New Mexico. She will be the second Indian woman to travel to space. She is motivating many Asian women and girls to pursue their dreams.

She grew up in Houston, near NASA's Johnson Space Center, and dreamed of becoming an astronaut since she was a child. However, due to her poor eyesight, she was unable to meet the requirements to become a pilot or an astronaut, delaying her high school plan to join the Air Force and then NASA.

The first women of Indian origin to travel to space was Kalpana Chawla (March 17, 1962 – February 1, 2003), an American astronaut and engineer. She flew on the Space Shuttle Columbia for the first time in 1997 as a mission specialist and primary robotic arm operator.

She was always fascinated by planes and flying as a child. She and her father went to local flying clubs and watched planes. She moved to the United States in 1982 after receiving a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Aeronautical Engineering from Punjab Engineering College in India, and in 1984 she received a Master of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington.

Chawla went on to earn a second Master's degree in aerospace engineering in 1986 and a PhD in aerospace engineering in 1988 from the University of Colorado Boulder.

She began working at NASA's Ames Research Center in 1988. She joined the NASA Astronaut Corps in March 1995, and her first flight was in 1996.

Her first space mission began on November 19, 1997, when she was part of the six-person crew of the Space Shuttle Columbia flight STS-87. Chawla was the first Indian woman to travel to space.

Chawla was chosen for her second flight as part of the STS-107 crew in 2001. During the launch of STS-107, Columbia's 28th mission, a piece of foam insulation detached from the Space Shuttle external tank, and when the spacecraft re-entered Earth's atmosphere, hot atmospheric gases caused it to become unstable and break apart. It was the disaster in which the country lost its first Women to go to space.

Sunita Lyn Williams is an American astronaut and United States Navy officer who previously held the records for the most spacewalks by a woman (seven) and the longest spacewalk by a woman (seven minutes) (50 hours, 40 minutes). Williams was a member of Expedition 14 and Expedition 15 on the International Space Station. In 2012, she was a flight engineer on Expedition 32 before becoming commander of Expedition 33.

Sunita Williams was born in Euclid, Ohio, to Deepak Pandya, an Indian American neuroanatomist, and Bonnie (Zalokar), a Slovene American Ursuline. Williams' paternal family is from Jhulasan in Gujarat's Mehsana district. In 1983, Williams graduated from Needham High School in Needham, Massachusetts. In 1987, she earned a Bachelor of Science in physical science from the United States Naval Academy, and in 1995, she earned a Master of Science in engineering management from Florida Institute of Technology.

Williams was launched to the International Space Station (ISS) with STS-116, aboard Space Shuttle Discovery, on December 9, 2006, to join the Expedition 14 crew. In April 2007, the Russian members of the crew rotated, changing to Expedition 15.

In July 2015, NASA named Williams as one of the first astronauts for commercial spaceflights in the United States. As a result, she has begun working with Boeing and SpaceX to train in their commercial crew vehicles alongside other selected astronauts. In August 2018, she was assigned to the Boeing CST-100 Starliner's first mission flight to the International Space Station, CTS-1.