Space programme finalist Vanajah still reaching for the stars

MALAYSIANSKINI | Around this time of year, Vanajah Siva takes a long flight back from the wintry climes of Jönköping, Sweden to celebrate Deepavali with her loved ones back in Malaysia.

Well, that’s most years.

This time around, as with many who place travelling as one of life’s priorities, the Kulim-born Vanajah finds herself grounded due to the restrictions in place with Covid-19 quarantine protocols.

When she first made the news a decade and a half ago, Vanajah was the only woman out of more than 11,000 applicants shortlisted in the final 18 of the Angkasawan spaceflight training programme, and her fame grew as she made it to the final four before Dr Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor was selected as the Malaysian cosmonaut-researcher to join the Russian Soyuz TMA-11 mission on October 10, 2007.

Today, she is blazing a different trail as an assistant professor at Jonkoping University’s School of Engineering at a department called the Supply Chain & Operations Management...