Kalpana Chawla
Kalparia Chawla was an eminent scientist and an astronaut, She was born in Karnal, Haryana on July 1, 1961. Kalpana was the daughter of Banwarilal, a businessman and Sanyogita, a simple housewife. She was educated at Tagore School, Karnal. Kalpana in Sanskrit means “imagination of the mind” and thus also “creation”. Her interest in flying was inspired by J. R. D. Tata, a pioneering Indian pilot and industrialist.
After her schooling, Kalpana graduated from Punjab Engineering College in Chandigarh with B.Sc. degree in Aeronautical Engineering. She went on to obtain a Master’s Degree in 1984 from the University of Texas, followed by a Doctorate from the University of Colorado in 1988. It was while she was doing her Ph.D. at Colorado that she started flying. But it was only in 1995 that she got a commercial pilot’s licence for single and multi-engine planes.
A naturalized American citizen, Kalpana was married to flying instructor, Jean Pierre Harrison, but she did not lose touch with her Indian roots. Quoting philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca she always said, “I was not born for one corner, the whole world is my native land”. Before joining NASA, Kalpana was working for a company Oversee Methods Inc. in California as Vice President and research scientist. During her stay in California, she developed some efficient techniques to perform aerodynamics optimization. Her research also covered such diverse fields as simulation and analysis of flow physics concerning the operation of powered lift aircraft at NASA Ames Research Centre in California. She graduated from NASA’s astronauts training Programme in 1995 along with 22 other trainees including five women.
On November 20, 1997 she was the first Indian woman to go into space, when the US space shuttle Columbia blasted off from the Kennedy Space Centre Cape Canaveral in Florida She flew on STS-87 (1997) and STS-107 (2003), logging more than 30 days in space. Chawla was part of six members crew on a 16-day research mission (January 16 to February 1, 2003) aimed at releasing a free flying satellite to study the Sun’s outer atmospheric Jaye Chawla was a vegetarian. On her mission, she carried a white silk banner as part of a worldwide campaign to honor teachers. The experimental carrier, mounted in Columbia’s cargo bay, had a variety of high-tech devices designed to study how weightless environment of space affects various physical processes The STS-107 mission ended abruptly on February 1, 2003 when Space Shuttle Columbia and her crew fished during entry, 16 minutes prior to scheduled landing. She was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honour, the NASA Space Flight Medal, and the NASA Distinguished Service Medal. NASA Mars Exploration Rover mission has named seven peaks in a chain of hills, named the Columbia Hills, after each of the seven astronauts lost in the Columbia shuttle disaster including Chawla hill after Kalpana Chawla. Kalpana Chawla has inspired several young Indians aspiring to be astronauts. Her brother, Sanjay Chawla, remarked “To me, my sister is not dead. She is immortal. Isn’t that what a star is? She is a permanent star in the sky. She will always be up there where she belongs”.
