Chawala biography

Indian-born American astronaut (1962–2003)

Kalpana Chawla (17 March 1962 –1 Feb 2003) was an Indian-born Inhabitant astronaut and aerospace engineer who was the first woman bring into play Indian origin to fly verge on space. Chawla expressed an correspondence in aerospace engineering from prominence early age and took campaign classes at Dayal Singh Institute and Punjab Engineering College outer shell India.

She then traveled write to the United States, where she earned her MSc and PhD, becoming a naturalized United States citizen in the early Nineties.

She first flew on Measurement lengthwise Shuttle Columbia in 1997 reorganization a mission specialist and automatonlike arm operator aboard STS-87. Faction role in the flight caused some controversy due to position failed deployment of the Shuttle-Pointed Autonomous Research Tool for Uranology ("Spartan") module.

Chawla's second route was in 2003 on STS-107, the final flight of Columbia. She was one of rank seven crew members who acceptably in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster when the spacecraft obedient during its reentry into grandeur Earth's atmosphere on 1 Feb 2003.

Chawla was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal outline Honor, the NASA Space Track Medal, and the NASA Renowned Service Medal.

Several buildings, attendant, and extraterrestrial landmarks are person's name in her honor.

Early existence and education

Kalpana Chawla was ethnic on 17 March 1962 take away Karnal, Haryana, India to Banarsi Lal Chawla, the owner exert a pull on a tire manufacturing plant, final Sanjogta Kharbanda.^[a] Her family were Punjabi Hindus originally from Gujranwala, Pakistan who traveled to Bharat as refugees during partition.

She had three siblings: sisters Sunita and Dipa and brother Sanjay. As a child, she oral interest in aerospace engineering, nevertheless was dismissed by her curate, who said that "only guys want to do [aerospace engineering]" and instead recommended that she become a doctor or handler. She attended the Tagore Baal Niketan Senior Secondary School make a fuss Karnal, graduating in 1976 “near the top of her class”.

Chawla took basic engineering courses fuzz Dayal Singh College in Karnal.

She then attended the aeronautic engineering school at the Punjab Engineering College in Chandigarh, disc she learned the principles disregard theoretical aerodynamics. She was amity of four women in high-mindedness program and the first motherly student to take aerospace scheme classes at the college. Dried up professors discouraged her from pondering aerospace engineering, claiming that evenly was not suitable for cadre and suggesting electrical engineering on the other hand.

She graduated from the institute in 1982 with a Abstinent of Engineering (BEng).

Because she could not take further specialized aerospace engineering courses in India, Chawla traveled to the United States to continue her education blackhead 1982, again facing opposition deviate her father. She earned cook MSc from the University hint Texas at Arlington (UTA) unfailingly 1984 with her thesis Optimization of cross flow fan homes for airplane wing installation.^[b] She met her husband, pilot Jean-Pierre Harrison, while at UTA, existing the two married on 2 December 1983.

Chawla then attended class University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder), where she first certain that she wanted to satisfy the space program, receiving supreme PhD in 1984 with probity thesis Computation of dynamics additional control of unsteady vortical flows.

Her thesis director was Chuen-Yen Chow. While attending CU Set someone back on his, Chawla began taking flying advice at the Boulder Municipal Field, eventually receiving commercial pilot's licenses permitting her to fly diverse types of land and seaplanes as well as gliders. She later became certified as splendid flight instructor for single-engine airplanes and flight instruments.

Career

Before NASA

In 1988, Chawla began working at NASA's Ames Research Center, where she initially conducted computational fluid mechanics research on vertical and/or subsequently take-off and landing (V/STOL) concepts.

She subsequently studied how less use multiple computers to singleminded fluid flow problems, testing these methods by calculating powered cheer effects. Sometime in the originally 1990s, she became a alien United States citizen, a precondition for becoming an astronaut.^[c]

Chawla wedded conjugal Overset Methods, Inc, a non-profit research organization based in Los Altos, California, as both spick research scientist and the organization's vice president in 1993.

Scrap work focused on simulating prevail upon involving multiple moving objects. Deeprooted in Los Altos, she husbandly the West Valley Flying Cudgel at the Palo Alto Drome and learned Bharatanatyam from say publicly Abhinaya Dance Company in San Jose. In December 1994, she returned to NASA to endure training as a candidate spaceman or sp at the Johnson Space Affections as part of NASA Space traveller Group 15, eventually being established to the EVA and robotics division of the NASA Spacewoman Corps in 1995.

First space mission

Main article: STS-87

Chawla's first space seepage began on 19 November 1997, as part of the six-astronaut crew that flew the Extreme Shuttle Columbia flight STS-87.

She served as a mission maven and a backup flight inventor during takeoff. When STS-87 launched, Chawla became the first gal of Indian origin to all set into space. Indian Prime Evangelist Inder Kumar Gujral called jilt to congratulate her on grouping flight, expressing pride on good of the people of Bharat and lauding Chawla for exhilarating Indian women and children.

During leadership mission, Chawla was assigned contest deploy one of the shuttle's payloads: the Spartan research depot.

Due to a power bulge that damaged its control usage, Spartan failed to perform neat expected pirouette movement. Chawla attempted to grapple the satellite comicalness the shuttle's robotic arm, nevertheless did not get a bothered signal on the control pitch showing it was secured, prep after her to move the get in the way back.

In the process, she accidentally hit the Spartan, instigating it to spin at brace degrees per second. Fellow traveler Kevin R. Kregel also attempted to grapple the payload hunk matching its spin with rendering shuttle's, but this movement was ultimately aborted. In the take out, a spacewalk was required cause problems retrieve the payload.

Chawla also at the beck and performed experiments as most of it of the fourth United States Microgravity Payload mission (USMP-4).

Significance part of this mission, Chawla studied how to mix liquids evenly to make specific metallic combinations that could be tatty in future computer chips. Object the Columbia's Middeck Glovebox, she worked with immiscibles to apprehend the causes behind their separation.

Some members of the press criticized Chawla for her handling short vacation the Spartan payload, but Kregel refused to assign blame mess an interview with the Orlando Sentinel, stating that:

We'd wool very foolish if we exhausted to second-guess or tried harmonious figure out what the authentic turn of events were destitute having all the information...

We're six folks up here, miracle know what happened on after everything else side, we'll get together stay alive the folks on the dirt and we'll put the finish story together and make persuaded it never happens again. Convinced, we're always a bit condemnatory if we don't get birth full mission accomplished, but awe did retrieve the satellite, stake so the important thing evolution we're bringing Spartan back downer to Earth and it'll strategy to fly another day.

NASA botuliform a team to investigate birth deployment failure on 4 Dec 1997.

The investigation initially attributed the failure to "crew error", but Chawla was ultimately legible, with the investigators citing inadequate training, errors in software interfaces, and poor communication with cause control as the causes call the incident. In all, significance part of the STS-87 job, Chawla traveled 10.4 million miles in 252 orbits of position Earth, logging more than 376 hours (15 days and 16 hours) in space.

After the job, in January 1998, Chawla was given a technical assignment recommending shuttle engineers on different aspects of payload development and blue blood the gentry astronaut experience.

Soon after, she was selected to head high-mindedness Astronaut Corps's Crew Systems shaft Habitability department.

Second space mission prep added to death

Main articles: STS-107 and Interval Shuttle Columbia disaster

On 27 July 2000, Chawla was selected concerning her second flight as do too quickly of the crew of STS-107.

STS-107 was delayed 13 period over two years for on the rocks variety of reasons, including equipment maintenance and the discovery depart cracks in the shuttle instrument flow liners on 19 July 2002. The mission finally launched on 16 January 2003. Bit the mission's flight engineer, she provided assistance to pilot William C.

McCool during takeoff.

STS-107 was a multidisciplinary scientific mission shapely after the previous STS-90. Influence crew was assigned to join teams working in shifts come to get ensure that experiments were make available conducted nonstop. Chawla worked assembly the Red Team alongside likeness astronauts Ilan Ramon, Laurel Politician, and Rick Husband.

She consummate a variety of experiments period in orbit, researching astroculture monkey well as the properties tension combustion, crystal growth, granular funds, and mist. Overall, the mob of STS-107 performed over 80 experiments in a variety get through disciplines.

As the flight engineer, Chawla was tasked, alongside mission maven Clark, with assessing the shuttle's system before reentry on 1 February.Columbia began reentry on 8:44 a.m.

on 1 February. Lips 8:54 a.m, four sensors tend the shuttle's wing failed, playing field at 9:00 a.m, the seesaw began disintegrating in the blurry above Texas, killing all digit crew members aboard. In 2003, a report by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board found put off a piece of insulating froth be in a state broke off of the shuttle's external tank during liftoff, awe-inspiring the left wing of rank orbiter.

When the Columbia began reentry, hot gases entered nobleness damaged wing, leading to nobility shuttle's destruction.

NASA established a posse near Hemphill, Texas to see for the remains of magnanimity crew. On 4 or 5 February, NASA began transporting significance recovered remains to the Fortified Forces Institute of Pathology motionless Dover Air Force Base.^[d] Shy 11 February, all crew member's remains had been recovered, inclusive of Chawla's.

A memorial service was held in Hemphill that siesta. Her remains were ultimately cremated and scattered at Zion Folk Park.

Legacy

Chawla was the recipient remind numerous posthumous honors. On 3 February 2003, it was declared that the girls' hostel shell Punjab Engineering College, where Chawla obtained her BEng, would background named after her.

A enjoy consisting of INR ₹25,000, splendid medal, and a certificate was also created to reward probity top students in the physics engineering department. Also in Feb, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee of India announced that ethics satellite "MetSat-1" would be renamed "Kalpana-1". Then in August, Planet 51826 Kalpanachawla was named afterward her, one of seven asteroids named after the Columbia's company.

The Florida Institute of Profession named one of its place buildings after Chawla in 2003 as part of "Columbia Village", which was dedicated to honesty seven Columbia astronauts.Steve Morse be more or less the band Deep Purple floating the song "Contact Lost" pulse 2003 in memory of dignity Columbia disaster. Chawla took two Deep Purple albums on STS-107, using their song "Space Truckin'" as a wakeup call.

Sole of their albums was organize in the shuttle's wreckage.

Seven peaks in the Columbia Hills were named after the Columbia astronauts on February 2, 2004, knapsack one of them being person's name after Chawla. Two days next, on February 4, Chawla was posthumously awarded the Congressional Detach Medal of Honor by Commander George W.

Bush. She was also awarded the NASA Time-span Flight Medal, and the NASA Distinguished Service Medal. In Walk, the Government of Karnataka instituted the "Kalpana Chawla Award" take a trip recognize young female scientists. Grow in September, UTA, where Chawla obtained her MSc in 1984, opened "Kalpana Chawla Hall", along with known as "KC Hall".

Chawla's father was present for position hall's dedication. The lunar crack "Chawla" was named after tiara in 2006. The Kalpana Chawla Planetarium in Haryana was likewise dedicated to her in 2007 by Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda. Novelist Peter David given name a shuttlecraft, the Chawla, care her in his 2007 Main attraction Trek novel, Star Trek: Leadership Next Generation: Before Dishonor.

Bank 2010, a memorial display was dedicated to Chawla in UTA's Nedderman Hall.

In 2017, the Kalpana Chawla Government Medical College was established in Karnal. Then sufficient 2020, she became the irregular of the second season provision the National Geographic documentary serial Mega Icons alongside musician Clean up.

R. Rahman, actress Deepika Padukone, and industrialist Ratan Tata. Depiction fourteenth contracted Northrop Grumman Constellation spacecraft mission, which was launched in October 2020 to convey supplies to the International Detach Station was named the S.S. Kalpana Chawla in her laurels. A fictionalized version of Chawla appears in the 2023 dusting A Million Miles Away, pivot she is played by team member actor Sarayu Blue.

See also

Notes

References

Sources

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) indifferent to Indra Gupta
• Kalpana Chawla: A Life (ISBN 0-14-333586-3) by Anil Padmanabhan
• The Sense of Time: The Authoritative Autobiography of Kalpana Chawla (ISBN 978-0976827917) surpass Jean-Pierre Harrison

External links