Sirisha Bandla

Sirisha Bandla is an aerospace engineer and commercial spaceflight executive who flew to the edge of space aboard Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity on the Unity 22 mission on 11 July 2021. Born on 1 January 1988 in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh, India, she moved to the United States at a young age, earned a bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering from Purdue University in 2011 and an MBA from George Washington University in 2015, and joined Virgin Galactic in 2015. On the Unity 22 flight she took part as a researcher and became the first person to run a human-tended research experiment on a Virgin Galactic flight. The brief flight, lasting roughly fifteen minutes in space, made her the second India-born woman to reach space. She holds the post of Vice President of Government Affairs and Research Operations at Virgin Galactic and was named one of the BBC 100 Women in 2022.