Raising the Glass Ceiling into Space
by TARA SHAWDE' BROWN
Sirisha Bandla was one of the five people on board the Virgin Galactic’s Unity 22 space flight.
Yep, this just happened: Second India-born & fourth person of Indian descent to leave Earth’s atmosphere is Sirisha Bandla · Vice President of Government Affairs at Virgin Galactic
The first time in space history that a woman of color astronaut was selected to participate in space exploration was in 1978.
To put things in perspective, in 1978, MS-DOS had just been invented; the first mobile phone was created; price of milk was only 91 cents; Garfield was a new cartoon to watch on Saturdays, and Lego People were the new toy craze!
So far, 2021 has proven to be an amazing year of resilience, and we are already halfway through the year. We should expect to have an eventful year ahead of us seeing that history happened this month!
Bandla said she was speechless when she was chosen to be one of five for this new mission.
“You don't often see women and people of color. I don't often see students that look like me in this industry just yet”, said Bandla in a September 2020 interview. She co-founded the Matthew Isakowitz Fellowship. The Fellowship is a program that helps college students venture into the commercial spaceflight industry.
Virgin Galactic Unity22 Crew. Left to right; Dave Mackay, Chief Pilot, Colin Bennett, Lead Operations Engineer, Beth Moses, Chief Astronaut Instructor, Richard Branson, Founder Virgin Galactic, Sirisha Bandla, Vice President of Government Affairs and Research Operations, Michael Masucci, Pilot.
We need to highlight the lack of diversity within the space industries. I believe that we as SWE members need to show little girls that becoming an astronaut is an attainable goal because of people like Sirisha Bandla. Shattering that glass ceiling and going to the edge of space and beyond, is a possibility for the near future!
Dream big and the sky is not the limit!
For more on Bandla’s experience, click here: Virgin Galactic's Sirisha Bandla Wants More Women, People of Color in Space (newsweek.com)