Dr Shawna Pandya is not likely to be the third Indian-origin woman in space, but she's still doing one hell of a job here on Earth.
Dr Shawna Pandya has been leading an interesting life for a while now, but it’s only recently the citizen scientist has been finding herself in the news. Reports indicate Dr Pandya might be next in line as the third woman of Indian-origin to make her way into space, but things aren’t exactly as clear as all that. We’re going to break it down for you right now.
Dr Shawna Pandya is a 32-year-old general practitioner based in Alberta, Canada. Many reports indicate she’s a neurosurgeon, but Dr Pandya herself has stated that, though she trained in neurosurgery for a short period, her medical licence is as a general practitioner. However, medicine isn’t her only scientific love, given that she registered for two citizen scientist-astronaut programs (CSA) years ago.
Dr Pandya is part of both Project PoSSUM and the PHEnOM Project, both of which are research projects that don’t actually involve going into space. PoSSUM is an acronym for Polar Suborbital Science in the Upper Mesosphere. It involves imaging noctilucent clouds from a high-altitude balloon over Antarctica, as well as later using manned reusable suborbital vehicles to study the fine structures of the clouds during a week-long deployment. And while PoSSUM evolved out of an earlier NASA-funded project to study climate change, it’s not officially a NASA venture, and instead works in partnership with the Canadian National Research Council.
PHEnOM, on the other hand, stands for Physiological, Health, and Environmental Observations in Microgravity. It’s a project by the SeaSpace Exploration & Research Society’s SeaSpace Research Institute and focuses on studying the effects of microgravity on humans, including research in biomedical science, pharmacology, and materials science. This project, similar to PoSSUM, is not tied to any space agency like NASA or the ESA, but is instead under the SeaSpace Society’s ambit, in the US.
While participants in both these projects are highly qualified individuals in the fields of engineering, research, and medicine, and also receive astronaut training of a sort, the teams never leave Earth’s gravity entirely. Instead, research is carried out in Earth-bound labs, parabolic aircraft, and eventually commercial suborbital spaceflight vehicles.
Dr Shawna Pandya (L) and crew testing commercial spacesuits in microgravity at the National Research Council. (Ross Lockwood/Facebook)
As you can see once all the information is gathered, Dr Shawna Pandya is a qualified doctor, now a trained citizen scientist-astronaut, and a researcher in her own right. However, this is far from circulating reports that indicate she’s joining the ranks of Kalpana Chawla and Sunita Williams. Dr Pandya herself has indicated that, despite being on the CSA team of the PHEnOM Project, there’s still no guarantee of her being onboard the flights into upper altitudes, instead of one of her other crew members.
Yet, even if Dr Pandya may not have the chance to really break free from Earth’s gravity and experience the final frontier, she’s still getting closer to it than most us could dream of, and her team’s research will greatly benefit those that do have that chance. That in itself is definitely something worthy of pride, so let’s not do her a disservice by muddling her contributions.
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 "spaceflight, Shawna Pandya, National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA), Kalpana Chawla, Sunita Williams")
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