Andhra origin girl Sirisha Bandla all set to fly space on Virgin Galactic spacecraft today

Telugu girl Sirisha Bandla who hails from Guntur is all set to fulfill her dream and head to space when on Virgin Galactic's first fully crewed flight test on Sunday. Sirisha will be of fourth Indian origin and the second Indian-born woman after Kalpana Chawla to fly space. Sirisha will be part of the six space travelers including Sir Richard Branson, the company's billionaire founder.

Born in Guntur, Bandla Sirisha settled in Houston, the USA with her parents and holds a Bachelor's degree in Aeronautical-Astronautical Engineering from Purdue University. She completed an MBA from the University of Washington and is currently the Vice President of Government Affairs at Virgin Galactic.

Virgin Galactic has been experimenting for 17 years intending to promote space tourism. Some experiments failed but eventually, the technology went into space. The company, which has already launched three spaceflight flights, is preparing for its first manned launch. A specially designed plane carrier to carry a space flight from Earth to space. Today, the spacecraft will send VSS Unity-22 to space. The launch will take place from the New Mexico Private Spaceport.

The space flight is separated from the plane carrier when it reaches an altitude of 15 km and explodes like a rocket. Once the specified altitude is reached the vertical flight becomes horizontal. At that point, the engine turns off. There the astronauts in it get a Zero Gravity experience and travel in space for some time and re-enter the Earth's atmosphere. The space journey will last for a total of 90 minutes.