Sirisha Bandla set to become third Indian-origin to fly beyond earth
Houston, Jul 10: Sirisha Bandla, a 34-year-old aeronautical engineer, is set to become the third Indian-origin woman to head to space when she flies as part of Virgin Galactic's first fully crewed flight test on Sunday.
Bandla, who was born in Guntur district in Andhra Pradesh and brought up in Houston, Texas, will join Sir Richard Branson, the company's billionaire founder, and five others on board Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo Unity to make a journey to the edge of space from New Mexico.
"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," she tweeted.
Bandla will be astronaut no 004 and her flight role will be Researcher Experience, according to her profile on Virgin Galactic.
She will become the third Indian-origin woman to fly into space after Kalpana Chawla and Sunita Williams.
"When I first heard that I was getting this opportunity, it was just. I think that that probably captured it very well, I was speechless. 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 Virgin Galactic Twitter on July 6.
Bandla, a Purdue University alumna, will be evaluating the human-tended research experience, using an experiment from the University of Florida that requires several handheld fixation tubes that will be activated at various points in the flight profile, a statement on the Galactic website said.
Bandla started in her role as the Vice President of Government Affairs and Research Operations at Virgin Galactic in January 2021, the university said in a statement.
Bandla grew up in Houston, near NASA's Johnson Space Center, and always wanted to become an astronaut. But poor eyesight meant she could not meet the requirements to become a pilot or an astronaut, derailing her high-school plan to go the Air Force-to-NASA route, she said in the statement.
"I've had fond memories of my time at Purdue, Bandla said in 2021, being part of a group of passionate individuals... Purdue built a strong foundation of technical and programmatic principles we all carried into our successful careers.
The flight window for the next rocket-powered test flight of its SpaceShipTwo Unity opens July 11, pending weather and technical checks, Galactic said in a statement.
The Unity 22 mission will be the twenty-second flight test for VSS Unity and the company's fourth crewed spaceflight. It will also be the first to carry a full crew of two pilots and four mission specialists in the cabin, including the company's founder, Sir Branson, who will be testing the private astronaut experience, it said.
"I've always been a dreamer. My mum taught me to never give up and to reach for the stars. On July 11, it's time to turn that dream into a reality aboard the next @VirginGalatic spaceflight," Branson tweeted following the announcement on July 2.
Building on the success of the company's most recent spaceflight in May, Unity 22 will focus on cabin and customer experience objectives.
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. https://t.co/sPrYy1styc
— Sirisha Bandla (@SirishaBandla) July 2, 2021
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Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
