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Kalpana Chawla
Born	(1962-03-17)17 March 1962 Karnal, Haryana, India
Died	1 February 2003(2003-02-01) (aged 40) Over Texas, U.S
Cause of death	Space Shuttle Columbia disaster
Resting place	Zion National Park, Utah, U.S.
Education	Punjab Engineering College (BEng) University of Texas, Arlington (MS) University of Colorado, Boulder (PhD)
Awards	Congressional Space Medal of Honor NASA Distinguished Service Medal NASA Space Flight Medal
Space career
NASA astronaut
Time in space	31d 14h 54m
Selection	NASA Group 15 (1994)
Missions	STS-87 STS-107
Mission insignia
Scientific career
Fields	Aerospace engineering
Thesis	Computation of Dynamics and Control of Unsteady Vortical Flows (1988)
Doctoral advisor	Chuen-Yen Chow

Kalpana Chawla (17 March 1962 –1 February 2003) was an Indian-born American astronaut and aerospace engineer who was the first woman of Indian origin to fly to space. Chawla expressed an interest in aerospace engineering from an early age and took engineering classes at Dayal Singh College and Punjab Engineering College in India. She then traveled to the United States, where she earned her MSc and PhD, becoming a naturalized United States citizen in the early 1990s.

She first flew on Space Shuttle Columbia in 1997 as a mission specialist and robotic arm operator aboard STS-87. Her role in the flight caused some controversy due to the failed deployment of the Shuttle-Pointed Autonomous Research Tool for Astronomy ("Spartan") module. Chawla's second flight was in 2003 on STS-107, the final flight of Columbia. She was one of the seven crew members who died in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster when the spacecraft disintegrated during its reentry into the Earth's atmosphere on 1 February 2003.

Chawla was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, the NASA Space Flight Medal, and the NASA Distinguished Service Medal. Several buildings, spacecraft, and extraterrestrial landmarks are named in her honor.

Early life and education

Kalpana Chawla was born on 17 March 1962 in Karnal, Haryana, India to Banarsi Lal Chawla, the owner of a tire manufacturing plant, and Sanjogta Kharbanda. Her family were Punjabi Hindus originally from Gujranwala, Pakistan who traveled to India as refugees during partition. She had three siblings: sisters Sunita and Dipa and brother Sanjay. As a child, she expressed interest in aerospace engineering, but was dismissed by her father, who said that "only guys want to do " and instead recommended that she become a doctor or teacher. She attended the Tagore Baal Niketan Senior Secondary School in Karnal, graduating in 1976 “near the top of her class”.

Chawla took basic engineering courses at Dayal Singh College in Karnal. She then attended the aeronautical engineering school at the Punjab Engineering College in Chandigarh, where she learned the principles of theoretical aerodynamics. She was one of four women in the program and the first female student to take aerospace engineering classes at the college. Some professors discouraged her from studying aerospace engineering, claiming that it was not suitable for women and suggesting electrical engineering instead. She graduated from the college in 1982 with a Bachelor 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 in 1982, again facing opposition from her father. She earned her MSc from the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) in 1984 with her thesis Optimization of cross flow fan housing for airplane wing installation. She met her husband, pilot Jean-Pierre Harrison, while at UTA, and the two married on 2 December 1983.

Chawla then attended the University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder), where she first decided that she wanted to join the space program, receiving her PhD in 1984 with the thesis Computation of dynamics and control of unsteady vortical flows. Her thesis director was Chuen-Yen Chow. While attending CU Boulder, Chawla began taking flying lessons at the Boulder Municipal Airport, eventually receiving commercial pilot's licenses permitting her to fly various types of land and seaplanes as well as gliders. She later became certified as a 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 dynamics research on vertical and/or short take-off and landing (V/STOL) concepts. She subsequently studied how to use multiple computers to solve fluid flow problems, testing these methods by calculating powered lift effects. Sometime in the early 1990s, she became a naturalized United States citizen, a requirement for becoming an astronaut.

Chawla joined Overset Methods, Inc, a non-profit research organization based in Los Altos, California, as both a research scientist and the organization's vice president in 1993. Her work focused on simulating problems involving multiple moving objects. While in Los Altos, she joined the West Valley Flying Club at the Palo Alto Airport and learned Bharatanatyam from the Abhinaya Dance Company in San Jose. In December 1994, she returned to NASA to undergo training as a candidate astronaut at the Johnson Space Center as part of NASA Astronaut Group 15, eventually being assigned to the EVA and robotics division of the NASA Astronaut Corps in 1995.

First space mission

Chawla's first space mission began on 19 November 1997, as part of the six-astronaut crew that flew the Space Shuttle Columbia flight STS-87. She served as a mission specialist and a backup flight engineer during takeoff. When STS-87 launched, Chawla became the first woman of Indian origin to go into space. Indian Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral called her to congratulate her on her flight, expressing pride on behalf of the people of India and lauding Chawla for inspiring Indian women and children.

During the mission, Chawla was assigned to deploy one of the shuttle's payloads: the Spartan research module. Due to a power surge that damaged its control system, Spartan failed to perform its expected pirouette movement. Chawla attempted to grapple the satellite with the shuttle's robotic arm, but did not get a clear signal on the control panel showing it was secured, causing her to move the arm back. In the process, she accidentally hit the Spartan, causing it to spin at two degrees per second. Fellow astronaut Kevin R. Kregel also attempted to grapple the payload by matching its spin with the shuttle's, but this movement was ultimately aborted. In the end, a spacewalk was required to retrieve the payload.

Chawla also supervised and performed experiments as part of the fourth United States Microgravity Payload mission (USMP-4). As part of this mission, Chawla studied how to mix liquids evenly to make specific metal combinations that could be used in future computer chips. Using the Columbia's Middeck Glovebox, she worked with immiscibles to understand the causes behind their separation.

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

We'd be very foolish if we tried to second-guess or tried to figure out what the actual turn of events were without having all the information... We're six folks up here, we know what happened on our side, we'll get together with the folks on the ground and we'll put the whole story together and make sure it never happens again. Sure, we're always a bit disappointed if we don't get the full mission accomplished, but we did retrieve the satellite, and so the important thing is we're bringing Spartan back down to Earth and it'll get to fly another day.

NASA formed a team to investigate the deployment failure on 4 December 1997. The investigation initially attributed the failure to "crew error", but Chawla was ultimately exonerated, with the investigators citing insufficient training, errors in software interfaces, and poor communication with ground control as the causes for the incident. In all, as part of the STS-87 mission, Chawla traveled 10.4 million miles in 252 orbits of the Earth, logging more than 376 hours (15 days and 16 hours) in space.

After the mission, in January 1998, Chawla was given a technical assignment advising shuttle engineers on different aspects of payload development and the astronaut experience. Soon after, she was selected to head the Astronaut Corps's Crew Systems and Habitability department.

Second space mission and death

On 27 July 2000, Chawla was selected for her second flight as part of the crew of STS-107. STS-107 was delayed 13 times over two years for a variety of reasons, including orbiter maintenance and the discovery of cracks in the shuttle engine flow liners on 19 July 2002. The mission finally launched on 16 January 2003. As the mission's flight engineer, she provided assistance to pilot William C. McCool during takeoff.

STS-107 was a multidisciplinary scientific mission modeled after the previous STS-90. The crew was assigned to two teams working in shifts to ensure that experiments were being conducted nonstop. Chawla worked on the Red Team alongside fellow astronauts Ilan Ramon, Laurel Clark, and Rick Husband. She performed a variety of experiments while in orbit, researching astroculture as well as the properties of combustion, crystal growth, granular materials, and mist. Overall, the crew of STS-107 performed over 80 experiments in a variety of disciplines.

As the flight engineer, Chawla was tasked, alongside mission specialist Clark, with assessing the shuttle's system before reentry on 1 February. Columbia began reentry on 8:44 a.m. on 1 February. At 8:54 a.m, four sensors on the shuttle's wing failed, and at 9:00 a.m, the shuttle began disintegrating in the sky above Texas, killing all seven crew members aboard. In 2003, a report by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board found that a piece of insulating foam broke off of the shuttle's external tank during liftoff, striking the left wing of the orbiter. When the Columbia began reentry, hot gases entered the damaged wing, leading to the shuttle's destruction.

NASA established a team near Hemphill, Texas to search for the remains of the crew. On 4 or 5 February, NASA began transporting the recovered remains to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology at Dover Air Force Base. By 11 February, all crew member's remains had been recovered, including Chawla's. A memorial service was held in Hemphill that afternoon. Her remains were ultimately cremated and scattered at Zion National Park.

Legacy

Chawla was the recipient of numerous posthumous honors. On 3 February 2003, it was announced that the girls' hostel at Punjab Engineering College, where Chawla obtained her BEng, would be named after her. A prize consisting of INR ₹25,000, a medal, and a certificate was also created to reward the top students in the aeronautical engineering department. Also in February, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee of India announced that the satellite "MetSat-1" would be renamed "Kalpana-1". Then in August, Asteroid 51826 Kalpanachawla was named after her, one of seven asteroids named after the Columbia's crew. The Florida Institute of Technology named one of its residence buildings after Chawla in 2003 as part of "Columbia Village", which was dedicated to the seven Columbia astronauts. Steve Morse of the band Deep Purple released the song "Contact Lost" in 2003 in memory of the Columbia disaster. Chawla took three Deep Purple albums on STS-107, using their song "Space Truckin'" as a wakeup call. One of their albums was found in the shuttle's wreckage.

Seven peaks in the Columbia Hills were named after the Columbia astronauts on February 2, 2004, with one of them being named after Chawla. Two days later, on February 4, Chawla was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor by President George W. Bush. She was also awarded the NASA Space Flight Medal, and the NASA Distinguished Service Medal. In March, the Government of Karnataka instituted the "Kalpana Chawla Award" to recognize young female scientists. Then in September, UTA, where Chawla obtained her MSc in 1984, opened "Kalpana Chawla Hall", also known as "KC Hall". Chawla's father was present for the hall's dedication. The lunar crater "Chawla" was named after her in 2006. The Kalpana Chawla Planetarium in Haryana was also dedicated to her in 2007 by Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda. Novelist Peter David named a shuttlecraft, the Chawla, after her in his 2007 Star Trek novel, Star Trek: The Next Generation: Before Dishonor. In 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 in 2020, she became the focus of the second season of the National Geographic documentary series Mega Icons alongside musician A. R. Rahman, actress Deepika Padukone, and industrialist Ratan Tata. The fourteenth contracted Northrop Grumman Cygnus spacecraft mission, which was launched in October 2020 to deliver supplies to the International Space Station was named the S.S. Kalpana Chawla in her honor. A fictionalized version of Chawla appears in the 2023 movie A Million Miles Away, where she is played by actress Sarayu Blue.

See also

• List of Asian Americans § Space
• List of female astronauts

Notes

1. Some sources, such as Launius and Furuyama, report Chawla's birthdate as 1 July 1961. According to Jean-Pierre Harrison, Chawla's husband, Chawla used 1 July as her birth date to enroll in school a year in advance of when she otherwise would have. Other sources, such as Cavallaro, corroborate this story
2. NASA says that she received her MSc from the "University of Texas," which is generally used to refer to the University of Texas at Austin, but most sources indicate that she attended UTA, and that is where her thesis was published.
3. Chien says she was naturalized in 1990 while Jones and Cavallaro say she was naturalized in 1991.
4. Chien gives the date as 5 February while Leinbach & Ward give the date as 4 February.

References

1. Dismukes 2009.
2. Launius 2008, p. 3; Furuyama 2013, p. 201.
3. Harrison 2011, p. 1.
4. ^ Cavallaro 2023, pp. 51–52.
5. Furuyama 2013, p. 201.
6. Padmanabhan 2003, pp. 8–9.
7. Chien 2006, p. 49.
8. ^ Launius 2008, p. 3.
9. Cavallaro 2023, p. 52.
10. Padmanabhan 2003, p. 26.
11. ^ Jones 2020.
12. Furuyama 2013, p. 201; Chien 2006, p. 49.
13. NASA 2004; Launius 2008, p. 3; UTA; Furuyama 2013, p. 201; Cavallaro 2023, p. 53.
14. UTA; Chawla 1984.
15. Chawla 1988; Chien 2006, p. 50; Furuyama 2013, p. 201.
16. Chawla 1988, p. 9.
17. Harrison 2011, p. 46; Cavallaro 2023, p. 53.
18. Harrison 2011, p. 55.
19. NASA 2004; Launius 2008, p. 3; Furuyama 2013, p. 201.
20. Chien 2006, p. 50; Jones 2020; Cavallaro 2023, p. 53.
21. Launius 2008, p. 3; Furuyama 2013, p. 201; Jones 2020.
22. ^ NASA 2004.
23. Padmanabhan 2003, pp. 43–46.
24. Hess, Campion & Herring 1994; Shayler & Moule 2005, p. 282; Launius 2008, p. 3; Jones 2020.
25. Evans 2005, pp. 320–327.
26. Evans 2005, pp. 333–335.
27. Evans 2005, p. 338.
28. Furniss 1998; Evans 2005, pp. 338–340.
29. Chien 2006, p. 56.
30. Padmanabhan 2003, p. 79.
31. Chien 2006, p. 90.
32. Gehman Jr. et al. 2003, p. 28.
33. Gehman Jr. et al. 2003, p. 29; Chien 2006, p. 124.
34. Gehman Jr. et al. 2003, p. 27.
35. Evans 2005, p. 414; Chien 2006, p. 168.
36. Gehman Jr. et al. 2003, p. 29; Evans 2005, pp. 421–422; Chien 2006, pp. 158–159.
37. NASA 2004; Evans 2005, pp. 419–424.
38. Evans 2005, pp. 426–427.
39. Gehman Jr. et al. 2003, pp. 38–39; Jones 2020.
40. Gehman Jr. et al. 2003, p. 138.
41. Chien 2006, p. vii.
42. Leinbach & Ward 2020, p. 97.
43. ^ Chien 2006, p. 372; Leinbach & Ward 2020, p. 117.
44. Leinbach & Ward 2020, pp. 131–132.
45. Chien 2006, p. 372.
46. The Indian Express 2003.
47. MOSDAC.
48. Uri 2023.
49. Florida Tech News 2003.
50. UPI 2003.
51. UPI 2003; Chien 2006, p. 238.
52. Royal Museums Greenwich.
53. Garber 2013.
54. NASA 2023.
55. The Hindu 2004.
56. Wong 2004.
57. USGS 2010; Uri 2023.
58. Haryana Government.
59. David 2007, p. 24.
60. UTA.
61. Gupta 2023.
62. The Indian Express 2020.
63. Pearlman 2020; Gohd 2020.
64. de León 2023.

Sources

• Biographical Data - Kalpana Chawla (Ph.D.) (PDF) (Report). NASA. 2004. Retrieved 8 November 2024.
• Cavallaro, Umberto (2023). To the stars: women spacefarers’ legacy. Cham: Springer. ISBN 978-3-031-19859-5.
• Chawla, Kalpana (1984). Computation of dynamics and control of unsteady vortical flows (Masters thesis). University of Texas at Arlington. OCLC 12319243.
• Chawla, Kalpana (1988). Optimization of cross flow fan housing for airplane wing installation (PhD thesis). University of Colorado Boulder. OCLC 8902887.
• Chien, Philip (2006). Columbia: Final Voyage. New York: Springer Science & Business Media. ISBN 978-0-387-27148-4.
• "Congressional Space Medal of Honor". NASA. 2023. Retrieved 25 November 2024.
• David, Peter (2007). Star Trek: The Next Generation: Before Dishonor. New York: Pocket Books/Star Trek. ISBN 1-4165-2742-7. OCLC 181644183.
• "Deepika, Rahman to feature in Mega Icons Season 2". The Indian Express. 2020. Retrieved 25 November 2024.
• "Deep Purple remembers shuttle astronaut". UPI. 2003. Retrieved 25 November 2024.
• de León, Concepción (2023). "'A Million Miles Away:' From the fields to outer space". Sonoma Index-Tribune. Retrieved 25 November 2024.
• Dismukes, Kim (2009). "Kalpana Chawla – STS-107 Crew Memorial". NASA. Archived from the original on 6 November 2004. Retrieved 22 January 2019.
• Evans, Ben (2005). Space Shuttle Columbia: Her Missions and Crews. Berlin: Springer Science & Business Media. ISBN 0-387-21517-4.
• "Florida Tech to Dedicate Residence Hall Complex in Memory of Columbia". Florida Tech News. 2003. Retrieved 25 November 2024.
• Furniss, Tim (29 April 1998). "Columbia crew is blamed for Spartan deployment failure". Flight Global. Retrieved 17 November 2024.
• Garber, Megan (1 February 2013). "Columbia's Astronauts, Remembered on Mars". The Atlantic. Retrieved 25 November 2024.
• Gehman Jr., Harold; et al. (2003). Columbia Accident Investiation Board - Report (PDF) (Report). Vol. 1. NASA. Retrieved 17 September 2024.
• Gohd, Chelsea (2020). "Antares rocket launches new astronaut toilet and more to space station for NASA". Space.com. Retrieved 25 November 2024.
• Gupta, Shobhit (2023). "Remembering Kalpana Chawla: First Indian-born American woman to go to space". Hindustan Times. Retrieved 25 November 2024.
• Harrison, Jean-Pierre (2011). The Edge of Time: the authoritative biography of Kalpana Chawla. Los Gatos: Harrison Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9768279-0-0. OCLC 885972649.
• Hess, Mark; Campion, Ed; Herring, Kyle (1994). "1995 Astronaut Candidates Selected" (TXT). NASA News. NASA. Archived from the original on 10 May 2021. Retrieved 17 November 2024.
• Jones, Mykah (2020). "Chawla, Kalpana". Texas State Historical Association. Retrieved 9 November 2024.
• "KALPANA-1 Introduction". Meteorological & Oceanographic Satellite Data Archival Centre (MOSDAC). Retrieved 25 November 2024.
• "Kalpana Chawla Award instituted". The Hindu. Chennai. 2004. Archived from the original on 13 July 2004. Retrieved 10 June 2007.
• "Kalpana Chawla Memorial Display". Kalpana Chawla Memorial Display - College of Engineering - The University of Texas at Arlington. Retrieved 8 November 2024.
• "Kalpana Chawla Planetarium(Kurukshetra)". Haryana Government. Retrieved 25 November 2024.
• Launius, Roger D. (2008). "Columbia Space Shuttle Crew". American National Biography Online. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/anb/9780198606697.article.2001896.
• Leinbach, Michael; Ward, Jonathan H. (2020). Bringing Columbia Home: The Untold Story of a Lost Space Shuttle and Her Crew. New York: Arcade. ISBN 978-1-948924-61-0.
• "The Moon and music". Royal Museums Greenwich. Retrieved 25 November 2024.
• "Moon - Chawla". Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature. USGS. 2010. Retrieved 25 November 2024.
• Padmanabhan, Anil (2003). Kalpana Chawla, a Life. New Delhi; New York: Penguin Books India. ISBN 0-14-333586-3.
• Pearlman, Robert Z. (2020). "Cargo spacecraft named for fallen NASA astronaut Kalpana Chawla". Space.com. Retrieved 25 November 2024.
• "Punjab Engineering College remembers Kalpana". The Indian Express. Archived from the original on 27 August 2006. Retrieved 10 June 2007.
• Shayler, David J.; Moule, Ian A. (2005). Women in Space - Following Valentina. Berlin; New York; Chichester: Springer Science & Business Media. ISBN 1-85233-744-3.
• Uri, John (2023). "20 Years Ago: Remembering Columbia and Her Crew". NASA. Retrieved 25 November 2024.
• Wong, Esther (2004). "Kalpana Chawla Hall dedicated". The Shorthorn. Retrieved 25 November 2024.
• Zhao, Xiaojian; Park, Edward J.W., eds. (2013). Asian Americans: An Encyclopedia of Social, Cultural, Economic, and Political History. Santa Barbara.: ABC-CLIO. ISBN 1-59884-240-4.
  • Furuyama, Katie. "Chawla, Kalpana (1961-2003)". In Zhao & Park (2013).

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

• "Astronaut Bio: Kalpana Chawla". NASA. February 2003. Retrieved 7 May 2019.
• Aerospace Engineering
• NASA biography
• Kalpana Chawla at IMDb

v t e STS-107
Space Shuttle Columbia disaster
	Main articles	Space Shuttle Columbia Space Shuttle external tank Space Shuttle thermal protection system
	Crew	Rick Husband William C. McCool David M. Brown Kalpana Chawla Michael P. Anderson Laurel Clark Ilan Ramon
	See also	Columbia Accident Investigation Board SpaceHab FREESTAR Hitchhiker Extended Duration Orbiter

v t e NASA Astronaut Group 15, "The Flying Escargot", 1994
NASA Astronaut Group 14 ← NASA Astronaut Group 15 → NASA Astronaut Group 16
Pilots and commanders	Scott Altman Jeffrey Ashby Michael Bloomfield Joe Edwards Dominic Pudwill Gorie Rick Husband Steven Lindsey Pamela Melroy Susan Still-Kilrain Frederick Sturckow
Mission specialists	Michael Anderson Kalpana Chawla Robert Curbeam Kathryn Hire Janet Kavandi Edward Tsang Lu Carlos Noriega James Reilly Stephen Robinson
International mission specialists	Jean-Loup Chrétien (France) Takao Doi (Japan) Michel Tognini (France) Dafydd Williams (Canada)
v t e NASA Astronaut Groups NASA Astronaut Corps Groups 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 Related List of astronauts by year of selection Astronaut ranks and positions List of United States Marine Corps astronauts List of United States Space Force astronauts

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