Shawna Pandya has built a medical career around environments where ordinary medicine becomes extraordinarily difficult.
She is an emergency and aeromedical transport physician, space-medicine researcher, aquanaut and research astronaut. Her official biography lists degrees in neuroscience, space studies and medicine, along with leadership of the International Institute for Astronautical Sciences Space Medicine Group.
Her career extends far beyond hospitals. In 2015, Pandya was part of the first crew to test a commercial spacesuit in zero gravity. She has since completed at least 180 parabolas across reduced-gravity flight campaigns.
She also went underwater. Pandya earned her aquanaut designation during the 2019 NEPTUNE mission and returned for another mission in 2023, accumulating about 235 hours underwater across the two expeditions.
Her research has included neuroscience payloads sent to the International Space Station, work connected with Polaris Dawn and Blue Origin flights, and studies of healthcare technologies for remote and extreme environments.
The next step is spaceflight. Virgin Galactic selected Pandya for the IIAS-02 research mission with Kellie Gerardi and Norah Patten aboard a future Delta-class spacecraft. The timing has moved: Virgin Galactic said on August 12, 2026 that its first Delta commercial flight had shifted to February 2027. Pandya’s specific flight date has not yet been publicly fixed.
Pandya joins an unusual group of people whose careers span medicine and human exploration, including Mae Jemison, who went from engineer to doctor to astronaut, Claudie Haigneré, who went from doctor to astronaut to government minister, and Story Musgrave, whose path ran from mechanic to physician to NASA astronaut.
What makes Pandya’s story different is that she has spent years preparing medicine itself for unfamiliar places: underwater habitats, weightlessness and, eventually, space.
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