Kalpana Chawla (March 17, 1962 – February 1, 2003) was an Indian American astronaut andaerospace 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 andPunjab 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 onSpace ShuttleColumbia in 1997 as a mission specialist androbotic arm operator aboardSTS-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.[2] Chawla's second flight was in 2003 onSTS-107, the final flight ofColumbia. She was one of the seven crew members who died in theSpace ShuttleColumbia disaster when the spacecraft disintegrated during its reentry into theEarth'satmosphere on February 1, 2003.
Kalpana Chawla was born on March 17, 1962, inKarnal,Haryana, India to Banarsi Lal Chawla, the owner of a tire manufacturing plant, and Sanjogta Kharbanda.[a][6] Her family werePunjabi Hindus originally fromGujranwala, Pakistan who traveled to India as refugees duringpartition.[7] She had three siblings: sisters Sunita and Dipa and brother Sanjay.[5] As a child, she expressed interest in aerospace engineering, but was dismissed by her father, who said that "only guys want to do [aerospace engineering]" and instead recommended that she become a doctor or teacher.[8] She attended theTagore Baal Niketan Senior Secondary School in Karnal, graduating in 1976 “near the top of her class”.[9]
Chawla took basic engineering courses at Dayal Singh College in Karnal.[10] She then attended the aeronautical engineering school at the Punjab Engineering College inChandigarh, where she learned the principles of theoretical aerodynamics.[11] She was one of four women in the program and the first female student to take aerospace engineering classes at the college.[12] 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).[13]
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.[9] She earned her MSc from theUniversity of Texas at Arlington (UTA) in 1984 with her thesisOptimization of cross flow fan housing for airplane wing installation.[b][15] She met her husband, pilot Jean-Pierre Harrison, while at UTA, and the two married on December 2, 1983.[12]
Chawla then attended theUniversity of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder), where she first decided that she wanted to join the space program, receiving her PhD in 1988 with the thesisComputation of dynamics and control of unsteady vortical flows.[16] Her thesis director wasChuen-Yen Chow.[17] While attending CU Boulder, Chawla began taking flying lessons at theBoulder Municipal Airport, eventually receiving commercial pilot's licenses permitting her to fly various types of land and seaplanes as well as gliders.[18] She later became certified as a flight instructor for single-engine airplanes andflight instruments.[19]
Chawla and her husband before the launch of STS-87
In 1988, Chawla began working at NASA'sAmes Research Center, where she initially conductedcomputational fluid dynamics research onvertical 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.[20] Sometime in the early 1990s, she became a naturalized United States citizen, a requirement for becoming an astronaut.[c]
Chawla joined Overset Methods, Inc, a non-profit research organization based inLos Altos, California, as both a research scientist and the organization's vice president in 1993.[22] Her work focused on simulating problems involving multiple moving objects.[23] While in Los Altos, she joined the West Valley Flying Club at thePalo Alto Airport and learnedBharatanatyam from the Abhinaya Dance Company inSan Jose.[24] In December 1994, she returned to NASA to undergo training as a candidate astronaut at theJohnson Space Center as part ofNASA Astronaut Group 15, eventually being assigned to the EVA and robotics division of theNASA Astronaut Corps in 1995.[25]
The crew of STS-87 in September 1997. From left to right - in orange: Chawla,Lindsey,Kregel,Kadeniuk; in white:Scott,Doi
Chawla's first space mission began on November 19, 1997, as part of the six-astronaut crew that flew theSpace ShuttleColumbia flightSTS-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 MinisterInder 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.[12]
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 astronautKevin 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.[26]
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 theColumbia's Middeck Glovebox, she worked withimmiscibles to understand the causes behind their separation.[27]
Deployment of the Spartan
Some members of the press criticized Chawla for her handling of the Spartan payload, but Kregel refused to assign blame in an interview with theOrlando 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.[2]
NASA formed a team to investigate the deployment failure on December 4, 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 withground control as the causes for the incident.[28] 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.[23]
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.[29] Soon after, she was selected to head the Astronaut Corps's Crew Systems and Habitability department.[30]
On July 27, 2000, Chawla was selected for her second flight as part of the crew of STS-107.[31] 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 July 19, 2002. The mission finally launched on January 16, 2003.[32] As the mission's flight engineer, she provided assistance to pilotWilliam C. McCool during takeoff.[33]
STS-107 was a multidisciplinary scientific mission modeled after the previousSTS-90.[34] 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 astronautsIlan Ramon,Laurel Clark, andRick Husband.[35] She performed a variety of experiments while in orbit, researchingastroculture as well as the properties ofcombustion,crystal growth,granular materials, andmist.[36] Overall, the crew of STS-107 performed over 80 experiments in a variety of disciplines.[37]
As the flight engineer, Chawla was tasked, alongside mission specialist Clark, with assessing the shuttle's system beforereentry on February 1.[38]Columbia began reentry on 8:44 a.m. on February 1. 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.[39] In 2003, a report by theColumbia Accident Investigation Board found that a piece ofinsulating foam broke off of the shuttle'sexternal tank during liftoff, striking the left wing of theorbiter.[40] When theColumbia began reentry, hot gases entered the damaged wing, leading to the shuttle's destruction.[41]
NASA established a team nearHemphill, Texas to search for the remains of the crew.[42] On February 4 or 5, NASA began transporting the recovered remains to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology atDover Air Force Base.[d][43] By February 11, all crew member's remains had been recovered, including Chawla's. A memorial service was held in Hemphill that afternoon.[44] Her remains were ultimately cremated and scattered atZion National Park.[45]
Chawla was the recipient of numerous posthumous honors. On February 3, 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.[46] Also in February, Prime MinisterAtal Bihari Vajpayee of India announced that the satellite "MetSat-1" would be renamed "Kalpana-1".[47] Then in August, Asteroid51826 Kalpanachawla was named after her, one of seven asteroids named after theColumbia's crew.[48] TheFlorida Institute of Technology named one of its residence buildings after Chawla in 2003 as part of "Columbia Village", which was dedicated to the sevenColumbia astronauts.[49]Steve Morse of the bandDeep Purple released the song "Contact Lost" in 2003 in memory of theColumbia disaster.[50] Chawla took three Deep Purple albums on STS-107, using their song "Space Truckin'" as a wakeup call.[51] One of their albums was found in the shuttle's wreckage.[52]
Seven peaks in theColumbia Hills were named after theColumbia astronauts on February 2, 2004, with one of them being named after Chawla.[53] Two days later, on February 4, Chawla was posthumously awarded theCongressional Space Medal of Honor by PresidentGeorge W. Bush.[54] She was also awarded the NASA Space Flight Medal, and the NASA Distinguished Service Medal.[23] In March, theGovernment of Karnataka instituted the "Kalpana Chawla Award" to recognize young female scientists.[55] 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.[56] The lunar crater "Chawla" was named after her in 2006.[57] The Kalpana Chawla Planetarium in Haryana was also dedicated to her in 2007 by Chief MinisterBhupinder Singh Hooda.[58] NovelistPeter David named a shuttlecraft, theChawla, after her in his 2007Star Trek novel,Star Trek: The Next Generation: Before Dishonor.[59] In 2010, a memorial display was dedicated to Chawla in UTA'sNedderman Hall.[60]
^Some sources, such as Launius and Furuyama, report Chawla's birthdate as July 1, 1961.[3] According to Jean-Pierre Harrison, Chawla's husband, Chawla used July 1 as her birth date to enroll in school a year in advance of when she otherwise would have.[4] Other sources, such as Cavallaro, corroborate this story[5]
^NASA says that she received her MSc from the "University of Texas," which is generally used to refer to theUniversity of Texas at Austin, but most sources indicate that she attended UTA, and that is where her thesis was published.[14]
^Chien says she was naturalized in 1990 while Jones and Cavallaro say she was naturalized in 1991.[21]
^Chien gives the date as February 5 while Leinbach & Ward give the date as February 4.[43]
Harrison, Jean-Pierre (2011).The Edge of Time: the authoritative biography of Kalpana Chawla. Los Gatos: Harrison Publishing.ISBN978-0-9768279-0-0.OCLC885972649.
"Kalpana Chawla Memorial Display".Kalpana Chawla Memorial Display - College of Engineering - The University of Texas at Arlington. RetrievedNovember 8, 2024.
Leinbach, Michael; Ward, Jonathan H. (2020).Bringing Columbia Home: The Untold Story of a Lost Space Shuttle and Her Crew. New York: Arcade.ISBN978-1-948924-61-0.
Shayler, David J.; Moule, Ian A. (2005).Women in Space - Following Valentina. Berlin; New York; Chichester: Springer Science & Business Media.ISBN1-85233-744-3.
Zhao, Xiaojian; Park, Edward J.W., eds. (2013).Asian Americans: An Encyclopedia of Social, Cultural, Economic, and Political History. Santa Barbara.: ABC-CLIO.ISBN978-1-59884-240-1.
