Kalpana chawla

Kalpana Chawla (Karnal, July 1, 1961 – February 1, 2003) was a PhD in space engineering and NASA astronaut, originally from India, where she is considered a national hero..

Biography

Chawla was born in Karnal, India in 1961 the third of four children, and died in the Columbia tragedy on February 1, 2003 over the southern United States 16 minutes before landing. Kalpana Chawla had a certified flight instructor license for single-engine, multi-engine, gliders, seaplanes, and even instrument control in airplanes.

Education

Chawla graduated from Tagore School in Karnal, India, in 1976. In 1982 she obtained a BS in Aeronautical Engineering from the Punjab College of Engineering, being one of the first four women to earn BS in Engineering in India. That same year she moved to the United States against her family's wishes and in 1984 she earned an MS in aerospace engineering from the University of Texas, and in 1988, a PhD in aerospace engineering from the University of Colorado. She married pilot Jean-Pierre Harrison, her flight instructor, in December 1983 and they remained married for almost twenty years, until her death. They had no children.

Experience

In 1988 Chawla began working at the Ames Research Center in the area of computerized lift-energy fluid dynamics. His research concentrated on simulating the complex air currents found around aircraft such as the Harrier in "ground effect." After the completion of this project, he continued his research on mapping solvent flows on computers, and studied these flows through complicated calculations. In 1993 she joined Overset Methods Inc., in Los Altos, California, as Vice President and Research Scientist to team up with other researchers specializing in simulating problems involving multi-body motion. She was responsible for the development and implementation of efficient techniques for performance dynamic optimization. The results of various projects in which Kalpana Chawla was involved are documented in technical conference publications and trade journals.

NASA experience

Chawla aboard Columbia.

Kalpana Chawla was selected by NASA in 1994 and reported to the Johnson Space Center in March 1995 as an astronaut candidate in the fifteenth Astronaut Group. After completing a year of training and evaluation, she was assigned as a crew representative to work on technical issues for the Astronaut Office in the Extravehicular Activities and Robotics Divisions and also in Computing. Her assignments included working on the development of Robotic Information Systems and testing the Space Shuttle control program at the Shuttle Integration Laboratory. In November 1996, she was assigned as the mission specialist and lead operator of the robotic arm on the STS-87 mission. In January 1998, she was selected as a shuttle crew representative and flight station crew, subsequently serving as the Crew Habitability and Systems section leader for the Astronaut Office. She first flew into space on STS-87 (1997) and STS-107 (2003). Kalpana Chawla logged a total of 30 days, 14 hours, and 54 minutes in space.

Space flight experience

• STS-87 Columbia (19 November to 5 December 1997). The STS-87 mission was the fourth flight of Microgravity Charge of the United States and was focused on experiments designed to study how the innovative environment of space affects the different physical processes, and observations of the outer atmospheric layers of the Sun. Two crew members performed Extravehicular Activities (EVA) which were intended for the manual capture of a satellite Spartanin addition to testing the EVA tools and procedures for the establishment of the International Space Station. STS-87 performed 252 orbits around the Earth, traveling 10.4 million kilometers in 376 hours and 34 minutes.

Among the spectators who attended the takeoff and landing was his family, already reconciled with their vocation, having arrived from India.

• Mission STS-107 Columbia (16 January – 1 February 2003). This 16-day mission was dedicated to the scientific research to which 24 hours a day were spent on two alternate shifts. The crew carried out and successfully carried out nearly 80 experiments. The mission ended in tragedy when the space shuttle Columbia was uninformed during the re-entry on the south-west sky of the United States when only 16 minutes were missing for landing.

The cause of this tragedy originated on launch day when a small piece of the insulating foam from the external fuel tank inadvertently dislodged and damaged the underside of the orbiter's left wing, tearing off some tiles from the heat shield. On the day of reentry, the absence of these tiles caused the internal structure to overheat, causing the destabilization and consequently disintegration of the ship, killing its 7 crew members, five men and two women.