Kalpana Chawla

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Kalpana Chawla
Kalpana Chawla, NASA photo portrait in orange suit.jpg
Kalpana Chawla in March 2002
Born March 17, 1962
Karnal, Punjab, India
(now in Haryana, India)
Died Script error: The function "death_date_and_age" does not exist.
Aboard Space Shuttle Columbia over Texas, U.S.
Punjab Engineering College
University of Texas at Arlington
University of Colorado at Boulder
Time in space
31 days, 14 hours, 54 minutes[1]
Selection 1994 NASA Group
Missions STS-87, STS-107
Mission insignia
Sts-87-patch.png STS-107 Flight Insignia.svg
Awards Congressional Space Medal of Honor

Kalpana Chawla (March 17, 1962[2][lower-alpha 1] – February 1, 2003) was an Indian-American astronaut[3] and the first Indian woman in space.[4] She first flew on Space Shuttle Columbia in 1997 as a mission specialist and primary robotic arm operator. In 2003, Chawla was one of the seven crew members killed in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster.[5]

Early life

Kalpana Chawla was born on March 17, 1962, in Karnal, Punjab (now in Haryana). She completed her earlier schooling at Tagore Baal Niketan Senior Secondary School, Karnal and completed her Bachelor of Engineering degree in Aeronautical Engineering at Punjab Engineering College at Chandigarh in 1982. She moved to the United States in 1982 where she obtained a Master of Science degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington in 1984.[6] Determined to become an astronaut even in the face of the Challenger disaster, Chawla went on to earn a second Masters in 1986 and a PhD[7] in aerospace engineering in 1988 from the University of Colorado at Boulder.[8]

Career

In 1988, she began working at the NASA Ames Research Center as Vice President of Overset Methods, Inc. where she did Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) research on Vertical/Short Takeoff and Landing concepts.[8] Chawla held a Certificated Flight Instructor rating for airplanes, gliders and Commercial Pilot licenses for single and multi-engine airplanes, seaplanes and gliders.[9] Becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen in April 1991, Chawla applied for the NASA Astronaut Corps.[2] She joined the Corps in March 1995 and was selected for her first flight in 1996. She spoke the following words while traveling in the weightlessness of space, "You are just your intelligence". She had traveled 10.67 million km, as many as 252 times around the Earth.

Her first space mission began on November 19, 1997, as part of the six-astronaut crew that flew the Space Shuttle Columbia flight STS-87. Chawla was the first Indian-born woman and the second Indian person to fly in space, following cosmonaut Rakesh Sharma who flew in 1984 on the Soyuz T-11. On her first mission, Chawla traveled over 10.4 million miles in 252 orbits of the earth, logging more than 372 hours in space.[8] During STS-87, she was responsible for deploying the Spartan satellite which malfunctioned, necessitating a spacewalk by Winston Scott and Takao Doi to capture the satellite. A five-month NASA investigation fully exonerated Chawla by identifying errors in software interfaces and the defined procedures of flight crew and ground control. After the completion of STS-87 post-flight activities, Chawla was assigned to technical positions in the astronaut office to work on the space station, her performance in which was recognized with a special award from her peers.

Chawla in the space shuttle simulator

In 2000, she was selected for her second flight as part of the crew of STS-107. This mission was repeatedly delayed due to scheduling conflicts and technical problems such as the July 2002 discovery of cracks in the shuttle engine flow liners. On January 16, 2003, Chawla finally returned to space aboard Space Shuttle Columbia on the ill-fated STS-107 mission. Chawla's responsibilities included the microgravity experiments, for which the crew conducted nearly 80 experiments studying earth and space science, advanced technology development, and astronaut health and safety.

Death

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Chawla died in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster which occurred on February 1, 2003, when the Space Shuttle disintegrated over Texas during re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere, with the death of all seven crew members, shortly before it was scheduled to conclude its 28th mission, STS-107.[10]

Awards

Posthumously awarded:

Honors and recognition

See also

Notes

  1. Though her birth date has sometimes been reported as July 1, 1961, that date entered her official records because it was used to enroll her in school at a younger-than-normal age.

References

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  17. David, Peter; Star Trek: Next Generation: Before Dishonor; Page 24.
  18. Kalpana Chawla International Space University Scholarship
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Further reading

  • Among The Stars-Life and Dreams of Kalpana Chawla by Gurdeep Pandher
  • India's 50 Most Illustrious Women (ISBN 81-88086-19-3) by Indra Gupta
  • Kalpana Chawla, a life (ISBN 0-14-333586-3) by Anil Padmanabhan
  • The Edge of Time: The Authoritative Biography of Kalpana Chawla (ISBN 978-0976827917) by Jean-Pierre Harrison

External links