Meet Sanjal Gavande, Indian woman part of Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin team

Gavande, a licensed commercial pilot, received the Pilot of the Year award in 2021 from Orange County, California chapter of Ninety-Nines

Sanjal Gavande, a 30-year-old woman from Maharashtra, is a part of the team who built Blue Origin's suborbital space rocket, New Shepard, that is all set to launch Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to space on July 20.

Gavande is a part of Blue Origin as a systems engineer. Before she joined the commercial spaceflight company to pursue her dream of building a spacecraft, Gavande worked in marine and racing car companies.

Sharing her experience of being a part of this mission, Gavande told TOI, “I am really happy that my childhood dream is about to come true. I am proud to be a part of Team Blue Origin.”

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Gavande completed her mechanical engineering degree from the University of Mumbai and she also holds a postgraduate degree in the same field from Michigan Technological University. While studying engineering, she opted for aerospace as a subject in her course.

"She always wanted to build a spaceship and that is the reason she chose aerospace as a subject while pursuing her Masters degree at Michigan Technological University,” her father Ashok Gavande who lives in Kolsewadi locality in Kalyan, Mumbai told India Today.

"She even got a commercial pilot's license in the US. She wanted to join Blue Origin. She would look on the website and then apply whenever she saw some openings. After her application was approved, she also cleared the interview and joined Blue Origin. We just supported her and she achieved everything on her own," he added.

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Gavande is also a licensed commercial pilot. She has also received the Pilot of the Year award in 2021 from Orange County, California chapter of Ninety-Nines which is a local chapter of the International Organization of Women Pilots.

Talking about the hurdles, Gavande faced in her journey, her mother Surekha told India Today, "People told us that she is a girl and why has she opted for mechanical engineering? I also thought sometimes about whether she would be able to handle such hard work. She has now made us all proud. She had a dream of designing aerospace rockets and she has achieved it.”

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