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Kalpana Chawla Birth Anniversary: Kalpana Chawla, who was the first Indian-origin woman to fly to space, was born on March 17, 1962 in Karnal, Haryana. The Indian American astronaut was one of the seven crew members who died in the 2003 Columbia Space Shuttle disaster when their space shuttle disintegrated upon its re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere.
Kalpana Chawla had expressed in her will that she wanted her ashes to be either scattered over the Himalayas or the Zion National Park in Utah. Her remains were identified along with those of the rest of the crew members and were cremated and scattered across the Zion National Park. She is regarded as a national hero in India.
Her first space flight was aboard Columbia Space Shuttle in 1997 as a mission specialist and primary robotic arm operator.
Here are 10 Lesser Know Facts about Kalpana Chawla
1. She was born to a Punjabi Hindu family in Karnal, Haryana. Her parents had migrated from Sheikhupura in Pakistan to Karnal during the partition of India.
2. Her fascination with airplanes started from childhood itself, she used to visit local flying clubs and watch planes with her father.
3. She got a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Aeronautical Engineering from Punjab Engineering College and was the only girl in her batch. She moved to the US in 1982 and completed a Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington in 1984. She did a second Masters in 1986 and also a PhD in aerospace engineering from the University of Colorado Boulder in 1988.
4. She began working at the National Aeronautics Space Agency Ames Research Center in 1988. She became a naturalised US citizen in April 1991 and joined the NASA Astronaut Corps in 1995. Her first application to join the corps was rejected in 1993.
5. She was the first Indian-origin woman then to fly to space twice in her lifetime. Her first flight was in 1997 as a part of a six-member crew. She had become the Indian-origin woman and second Indian to fly in space. During her first space mission, she had spoken to the then Indian Prime Minister IK Gujaral and showed him the pictures of the Himalayas as captured from space.
6. Her second flight was STS-107, the 28th and final flight of Space Shuttle Columbia in 2003. The ill-fated 16-day mission took off on January 16, 2003 and was scheduled to return on February 1st. The space shuttle disintegrated right after its re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere over Texas, just 16 minutes before it was scheduled to touchdown.
7. Kalpana Chawla died along with her six other crew members in the Columbia Space Shuttle disaster, following which NASA halted Space Shuttle Columbia’s mission for many years. The construction of the ISS was also put on hold and the station relied entirely on the Russian Roscosmos State Corporation for resupply for 29 months till NASA shuttle flights resumed.
8. Kalpana Chawla was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor. She received many more medals, awards and recognition posthumously from both US and Indian governments.
9. NASA named seven hills on Mars in memory of the seven astronauts who died in the Columbia Space Shuttle disaster. India’s first weather satellite was also called ‘Kalpana 1’.
10. She was married to her husband Jean Pierre Harisson for 20 years before her death in February 2003. She had married at the age of 21 on December 2, 1983. Harisson has remarried and has a young son now and runs a publishing company in Los Gatos, California.
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