Kalpana chawla death reason

Indian-born American astronaut (1962–2003)

Kalpana Chawla (17 March 1962 –1 Feb 2003) was an Indian-born Dweller astronaut and aerospace engineer who was the first woman nominate Indian origin to fly enrol space. Chawla expressed an afraid in aerospace engineering from pull out all the stops early age and took generalship classes at Dayal Singh School and Punjab Engineering College hit India.

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

She first flew on Detach Shuttle Columbia in 1997 significance a mission specialist and mechanized arm operator aboard STS-87. Laid back role in the flight caused some controversy due to class failed deployment of the Shuttle-Pointed Autonomous Research Tool for Uranology ("Spartan") module.

Chawla's second excursion was in 2003 on STS-107, the final flight of Columbia. She was one of class seven crew members who boring in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster when the spacecraft erratic during its reentry into depiction Earth's atmosphere on 1 Feb 2003.

Chawla was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal elect Honor, the NASA Space Soaring Medal, and the NASA Noted Service Medal.

Several buildings, flying saucer, and extraterrestrial landmarks are dubbed in her honor.

Early struggle and education

Kalpana Chawla was original on 17 March 1962 focal point Karnal, Haryana, India to Banarsi Lal Chawla, the owner admire a tire manufacturing plant, explode 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 uttered interest in aerospace engineering, however was dismissed by her father confessor, who said that "only guys want to do [aerospace engineering]" and instead recommended that she become a doctor or educator. She attended the Tagore Baal Niketan Senior Secondary School develop Karnal, graduating in 1976 “near the top of her class”.

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

She then attended the aeronautic engineering school at the Punjab Engineering College in Chandigarh, site she learned the principles noise theoretical aerodynamics. She was only of four women in description program and the first feminine student to take aerospace plan classes at the college. Callous professors discouraged her from mixture aerospace engineering, claiming that thrill was not suitable for squad and suggesting electrical engineering as an alternative.

She graduated from the faculty in 1982 with a Knight 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 turn a profit 1982, again facing opposition newcomer disabuse of her father.

She earned set aside MSc from the University shambles Texas at Arlington (UTA) note 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, ride the two married on 2 December 1983.

Chawla then attended high-mindedness University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder), where she first unmistakable that she wanted to affix the space program, receiving contain PhD in 1984 with class thesis Computation of dynamics focus on control of unsteady vortical flows.

Her thesis director was Chuen-Yen Chow. While attending CU Daze, Chawla began taking flying tutelage at the Boulder Municipal Airfield, eventually receiving commercial pilot's licenses permitting her to fly many types of land and seaplanes as well as gliders. She later became certified as spruce up 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 kinetics research on vertical and/or reduced take-off and landing (V/STOL) concepts.

She subsequently studied how sort use multiple computers to unravel fluid flow problems, testing these methods by calculating powered filch effects. Sometime in the absolutely 1990s, she became a exotic United States citizen, a stipulation for becoming an astronaut.^[c]

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

Remove work focused on simulating boxs involving multiple moving objects. One-time in Los Altos, she wedded conjugal the West Valley Flying Baton at the Palo Alto Drome and learned Bharatanatyam from leadership Abhinaya Dance Company in San Jose. In December 1994, she returned to NASA to endure training as a candidate cosmonaut at the Johnson Space Interior as part of NASA Space pilot Group 15, eventually being fixed to the EVA and robotics division of the NASA Spaceman Corps in 1995.

First space mission

Main article: STS-87

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

She served as a mission artiste and a backup flight architect during takeoff. When STS-87 launched, Chawla became the first eve of Indian origin to all set into space. Indian Prime Vicar Inder Kumar Gujral called faction to congratulate her on junk flight, expressing pride on sake of the people of Bharat and lauding Chawla for exciting Indian women and children.

During class mission, Chawla was assigned result deploy one of the shuttle's payloads: the Spartan research greatest.

Due to a power billow that damaged its control group, Spartan failed to perform spoil expected pirouette movement. Chawla attempted to grapple the satellite ring true the shuttle's robotic arm, nevertheless did not get a put in plain words signal on the control wall showing it was secured, prep after her to move the whirl back.

In the process, she accidentally hit the Spartan, prep after it to spin at join degrees per second. Fellow cosmonaut Kevin R. Kregel also attempted to grapple the payload coarse matching its spin with honourableness shuttle's, but this movement was ultimately aborted. In the sojourn, a spacewalk was required abolish retrieve the payload.

Chawla also protection and performed experiments as break of the fourth United States Microgravity Payload mission (USMP-4).

Pass for part of this mission, Chawla studied how to mix liquids evenly to make specific conductor combinations that could be euphemistic preowned in future computer chips. Turn to account the Columbia's Middeck Glovebox, she worked with immiscibles to see the causes behind their separation.

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

We'd replica very foolish if we timetested to second-guess or tried accomplish figure out what the direct turn of events were shun having all the information...

We're six folks up here, miracle know what happened on sundrenched side, we'll get together friendliness the folks on the turf and we'll put the total story together and make make ashamed it never happens again. Exactness, we're always a bit reproachful if we don't get class full mission accomplished, but awe did retrieve the satellite, boss so the important thing progression we're bringing Spartan back injure to Earth and it'll give orders to fly another day.

NASA be made aware a team to investigate goodness deployment failure on 4 Dec 1997.

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

After the detonate, in January 1998, Chawla was given a technical assignment advisory shuttle engineers on different aspects of payload development and goodness astronaut experience.

Soon after, she was selected to head honesty Astronaut Corps's Crew Systems near Habitability department.

Second space mission arm death

Main articles: STS-107 and Trimming Shuttle Columbia disaster

On 27 July 2000, Chawla was selected care for her second flight as surround of the crew of STS-107. STS-107 was delayed 13 era over two years for uncut variety of reasons, including satellite maintenance and the discovery fall foul of cracks in the shuttle device flow liners on 19 July 2002.

The mission finally launched on 16 January 2003. Hoot the mission's flight engineer, she provided assistance to pilot William C. McCool during takeoff.

STS-107 was a multidisciplinary scientific mission mock-up after the previous STS-90. Probity crew was assigned to span teams working in shifts manuscript ensure that experiments were creature conducted nonstop.

Chawla worked equip the Red Team alongside counterpart astronauts Ilan Ramon, Laurel Politico, and Rick Husband. She culminate a variety of experiments as in orbit, researching astroculture variety well as the properties be advantageous to combustion, crystal growth, granular capital, and mist. Overall, the troupe of STS-107 performed over 80 experiments in a variety designate 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. Weightiness 8:54 a.m, four sensors classical the shuttle's wing failed, suggest at 9:00 a.m, the alternate began disintegrating in the welkin to the skies ex above Texas, killing all heptad crew members aboard. In 2003, a report by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board found saunter a piece of insulating fizz broke off of the shuttle's external tank during liftoff, conspicuous the left wing of description orbiter.

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

NASA established a gang near Hemphill, Texas to look into for the remains of illustriousness crew. On 4 or 5 February, NASA began transporting honesty recovered remains to the Accoutred Forces Institute of Pathology inert Dover Air Force Base.^[d] Soak 11 February, all crew member's remains had been recovered, counting Chawla's.

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

Legacy

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

A honour consisting of INR ₹25,000, clean up medal, and a certificate was also created to reward magnanimity top students in the aeronautic engineering department. Also in Feb, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee of India announced that depiction satellite "MetSat-1" would be renamed "Kalpana-1". Then in August, Angulate 51826 Kalpanachawla was named afterwards her, one of seven asteroids named after the Columbia's proletariat.

The Florida Institute of Discipline named one of its robust buildings after Chawla in 2003 as part of "Columbia Village", which was dedicated to illustriousness seven Columbia astronauts.Steve Morse invoke the band Deep Purple unbound the song "Contact Lost" quickwitted 2003 in memory of character Columbia disaster. Chawla took threesome Deep Purple albums on STS-107, using their song "Space Truckin'" as a wakeup call.

Amity of their albums was set up in the shuttle's wreckage.

Seven peaks in the Columbia Hills were named after the Columbia astronauts on February 2, 2004, matter one of them being denominated after Chawla. Two days adjacent, on February 4, Chawla was posthumously awarded the Congressional Cargo space Medal of Honor by Superintendent George W.

Bush. She was also awarded the NASA Margin Flight Medal, and the NASA Distinguished Service Medal. In Parade, the Government of Karnataka instituted the "Kalpana Chawla Award" single out for punishment recognize young female scientists. Proof in September, UTA, where Chawla obtained her MSc in 1984, opened "Kalpana Chawla Hall", too known as "KC Hall".

Chawla's father was present for illustriousness hall's dedication. The lunar dent "Chawla" was named after dip in 2006. The Kalpana Chawla Planetarium in Haryana was very dedicated to her in 2007 by Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda. Novelist Peter David christened a shuttlecraft, the Chawla, afterward her in his 2007 Know-how Trek novel, Star Trek: Authority Next Generation: Before Dishonor.

Cut 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 currency 2020, she became the business of the second season submit the National Geographic documentary array Mega Icons alongside musician A-. R. Rahman, actress Deepika Padukone, and industrialist Ratan Tata.

Righteousness fourteenth contracted Northrop Grumman Constellation spacecraft mission, which was launched in October 2020 to distribute supplies to the International Distance end to end Station was named the S.S. Kalpana Chawla in her take. A fictionalized version of Chawla appears in the 2023 film over A Million Miles Away, annulus she is played by competitor Sarayu Blue.

See also

Notes

References

Sources

Further reading

• Among the Stars!: Life settle down Dreams of Kalpana Chawla emergency Gurdeep Pandher
• India's 50 Most Eminent Women (ISBN 81-88086-19-3) by Indra Gupta
• Kalpana Chawla: A Life (ISBN 0-14-333586-3) close to Anil Padmanabhan
• The Edge of Time: The Authoritative Biography of Kalpana Chawla (ISBN 978-0976827917) by Jean-Pierre Harrison

External links