Sirisha Bandla will be the second India-born girl to go into the space and the first Telugu girl to do so as she is set to take off on Virgin Galactic’s winged rocket ship from New Mexico on July 11. Born in Guntur, she is part of Virgin Galactic, a leading American private space agency, that will launch its spacecraft next weekend. Earlier, she served as the associate director for the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, an industry association of commercial spaceflight companies. She worked on various policies with the aim to promote the commercial space industry and make commercial spaceflight a reality. Sirisha will be the fourth Indian to fly into space after Rakesh Sharma, Kalpana Chawla and Sunita Williams.

Source: The Hindu July 02, 2021 14:48 UTC