Canada-born neurosurgeon, Shawna Pandya is all set to become the third women of Indian-origin to go on a space mission with NASA after being shortlisted under its 2018 Citizen Science Astronaut (CSA) programme. Kalpana Chawla and Sunita Williams were the first two Indian-origin women to fly to space. In an interview with the media Shawna Pandya said, “I interned with NASA and also did a course in aerospace medicine, so that laid the foundation for me.”
You may also want to watch-
The 32-year old Shawna Pandya will fly to space along with eight other astronauts in 2018. With her roots in Mumbai where her grandmother lives, Pandya is a general physician at the Alberta University Hospital. Besides being a doctor and an astronaut, she always wanted to be an opera singer, an international taekwondo champion and she has also done her training in Muay Thai with a Navy SEAL. While talkiung about her programme she said, “I am being trained as a citizen scientist and there are some 120 who would be part of the space mission. The experiments in bio-medicine and medical science along with physiological, health, and environmental observations in Microgravity (PHEnOM) are also part of it. The work is distributed among the participants.”
She further said, “I am also in the team working for a project called Polar Suborbital Science in the Upper Mesosphere (PoSSUM), which will study the effects of climate change.” Talking about of support from her family she said, “There has been a lot of support from my family, including my mother. They were well aware of my dreams since childhood and now also they are supporting to my journey.” Shawna Pandya is currently in Mumbai holding talks with medical professionals after being shortlisted for the CSA programme.
