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Kalpana Chawla

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Kalpana Chawla

NASA

March 17, 1962 Born , , India

February 1, 2003 (aged 40) Died Aboard Columbia over , U.S.

Previous

Research Scientist occupation

Time in space 31 days, 14 hours, 54 minutes

Selection 1994 NASA Group

Missions STS-87, STS-107 Mission insignia

Awards

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

Contents

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 1 Education  2 NASA career  3 Death  4 Awards  5 Memorials  6 See also  7 References  8 Further reading  9 External links

Education[edit]

Chawla completed her earlier schooling at Tagore Baal Niketan School, Karnal. She was underage and to enable her to enroll in school, her date of birth was changed to July 1, 1961. She completed Bachelor of Engineering degree in Aeronautical Engineering at Punjab Engineering College at Chandigarh in 1982. She moved to the in 1982 and obtained a M.S. degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington in 1984. Chawla went on to earn a second M.S. degree in 1986 and a PhD in aerospace engineering in 1988 from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Later that year she began working at the NASA as vice president of Overset Methods, Inc. where she did CFD research on Vertical/Short Takeoff and Landing concepts. Chawla held a Certificated Flight Instructor rating for airplanes, gliders and Commercial Pilot licenses for single and multi-engine airplanes, seaplanes and gliders. NASA career[edit]

Chawla joined the NASA Astronaut 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 in a spacecraft. On her first mission, Chawla traveled over 10.4 million miles in 252 orbits of the earth, logging more than 372 hours in space. During STS-87, she was responsible for deploying the Spartan Satellite which malfunctioned, necessitating a spacewalk by Winston Scott and 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 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[edit]

Kalpana 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 loss of all seven crew members, shortly before it was scheduled to conclude its 28th mission, STS-107. Awards[edit]

Posthumously awarded:

 Congressional Space Medal of Honor  NASA Space Flight Medal  NASA Distinguished Service Medal Memorials[edit]

 On 18 November 2012, in Karnal city, Haryana, India, Chawla's birthplace and first home town, the foundation stone of the Kalpana Chawla Government Medical College was laid by the Haryana Government in her memory.  The Kalpana Chawla ISU Scholarship fund was founded by alumni of the International Space University (ISU) in 2010 to support Indian student participation in international space education programs.[5]  The Kalpana Chawla Memorial Scholarship program was instituted by the Indian Students Association (ISA) at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) in 2005 for meritorious graduate students.[6]  The Kalpana Chawla Outstanding Recent Alumni Award at the University of Colorado, given since 1983, was renamed for Kalpana Chawla.[7]  In Karnal city, India, at least 30,000 schoolchildren and citizens joined hands to make a 36.4-km-long human chain to support the demand for a Kalpana Chawla medical college in the Karnal city, which was announced by then Health Minister of India Dr. C. P. Thakur and later promised by Dr. Manmohan Singh. The Kalpana Chawla Medical College Nirman Committee, backed by volunteers and activists of various organizations, supported by students from 34 schools, swarmed the roads and formed a chain along the roads in Karnal city to demonstrate that they continued to revere Kalpana Chawla as an outstanding astronaut.[8]  Asteroid 51826 Kalpanachawla, one of seven named after the Columbia's crew.[9]  On February 5, 2003, India's Prime Minister announced that the meteorological series of satellites, METSAT, was to be renamed as "KALPANA". The first satellite of the series, "METSAT-1", launched by India on September 12, 2002, will be now known as "KALPANA-1". "KALPANA-2" was expected to be launched by 2007.[10][dated info]  74th Street in Jackson Heights, , City has been renamed 74th Street Kalpana Chawla Way in her honor.  The University of Texas at Arlington (where Chawla obtained a Master of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering in 1984) opened a dormitory named in her honor, Kalpana Chawla Hall, in 2004.[11]  The Kalpana Chawla Award was instituted by the government of Karnataka in 2004 for young women scientists.[12]  The girls' hostel at Punjab Engineering College is named after Chawla. In addition, an award of INR twenty-five thousand, a medal, and a certificate is instituted for the best student in the Aeronautical Engineering department.[13]  NASA has dedicated a supercomputer to Chawla.[14]  One of Florida Institute of Technology's student apartment complexes, Columbia Village Suites, has halls named after each of the , including Chawla.  The NASA mission has named seven peaks in a chain of hills, named the , after each of the seven astronauts lost in the Columbia shuttle disaster. One of them is Chawla Hill, named after Chawla.  Steve Morse from the band created the song "Contact Lost" in memory of the Columbia tragedy along with her interest in the band. The song can be found on the album Bananas.[15]  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."[16]

Kalpana Chawla Space Technology Cell, at IIT Kharagpur.

 Novelist named a shuttlecraft, the Chawla, after the astronaut in his 2007 novel, Star Trek: The Next Generation: Before Dishonor.[17]  The University of Texas at Arlington dedicated the Kalpana Chawla Memorial on May 3, 2010 in Nedderman Hall, one of the primary buildings in the College of Engineering.[18]  The Government of Haryana established the Kalpana Chawla Planetarium in Jyotisar, .[19]  The Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, named the Kalpana Chawla Space Technology Cell in her honor.[20][21]  A military housing development at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland, has been named Columbia Colony, and there is a street named Chawla Way