15. Kalpana Chawla - First Indian woman in space (1961-2003)

 


 

Kalpana Chawla was the first woman born in India to travel to outer space. She  successfully completed the first journey, but almost completed the second journey and shortly before reaching Earth, the vehicle they were traveling in exploded, killing her along with the six other passengers who were traveling with them.

 

Kalpana was born on 1 July 1961 in Karnal, Haryana. Graduated from Punjab Engineering College with BA in Aeronautical Engineering. She went to America for higher education and accepted American citizenship in 1980. He earned a master's degree in aeronautical engineering from the University of Texas and a Ph.D. from the University of Colorado in 1988. After that, she joined the American space agency NASA's Ames Research Centre in the research department on theories of launching spacecraft.

 

In 1994, Kalpana was selected for space travel. After a year of training, they were selected as crew representatives for space shuttle experiments in an outer space EVA/Robotics category.

Kalpana Chawla's first opportunity to travel to outer space was in November 1997 on Columbia space shuttle mission STS-87. The shuttle orbited the Earth 252 times in two weeks and returned to Earth. The study of the surface of the Sun was important in conducting a number of experiments in outer space. Kalpana went outside the spacecraft and fixed some malfunctions.

Kalpana was  selected for another space flight in 2000. She was on NASA mission STS-107 as a specialist. But the trip had to be postponed several times due to various glitches. Finally, in 2003, that journey was set off. During the 16-day journey, the passengers of the vehicle completed more than 80 tests.

On February 1, 2003, the Space Shuttle returned to Earth and approached the Kennedy Space Centre. When the shuttle was launched from Earth, a thermal shield about the size of a small briefcase had peeled off from one of the shuttle's wings. This was part of the protection to prevent excessive heat from entering the vehicle as it approaches the ground. As the shuttle entered the Earth's atmosphere from outer space and approached Earth at high speed, hot gas flowed inward through the missing heat shield on the vehicle's wing. The stability of the vehicle was  lost. The vehicle, which lost control, rolled over and injured the passengers inside the vehicle. Within a few minutes, the pressure inside the vehicle decreased and all the passengers died. All seven passengers were killed immediately when the shuttle exploded over Texas in the state of Louisiana and fell to the ground. This was the second major accident in the American space shuttle program. Before this, in 1986, the shuttle Challenger was involved in an accident. Kalpana Chawla spent 30 days, 14 hours and 54 minutes in outer space in two trips. After the first trip, they said: "When we see the stars in outer space and our Milky Way, we feel that we are not from a particular country, but a small piece of this solar system, the universe itself."

Contribution of Kalpana Chawla

Several detailed investigations were carried out by several committees into the shuttle accident that resulted in the death of Kalpana and others.

The University of Texas at Arlington College of Engineering erected a memorial to Kalpana in 2010. The space suit Kalpana used at the time of its inauguration, photos of her, information about her life, and a flag flown over the Johnson Space Centre were displayed. There was a news that Kalpana Chawla's life is being made into a movie and Priyanka Chopra will play the role of Kalpana in it. However, Kalpana's husband Jean-Pierre Harrison denied the news.

Reference

https://www.space.com/17056-kalpana-chawla-biography.html

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