KALPANA CHAWLA AND THE
SPACE SHUTTLE Indian American Kalpana Chawla was part of the international crew aboard the U.S. Space Shuttle Columbia Flight STS-87 who completed a successful mission last December. While Earthbound humans were embroiled in politics and other quirks of the third planet from the Sun, the sixmember crew space-walked, manipulated remote control devices and orbited millions of miles performing experiments.
K
Courtesy NASA
alpana Chawla says scientist. In 1994 she was she never dreamed, as selected by NASA for training a child in Karnal, that as an astronaut, which she she would cross the began in March 1995, at frontiers of space. It Johnson Space Center (JSC) in was enough that her parents Houston, Texas. allowed her to attend engineering The fourth U.S. Microgravity college after she graduated Payload shuttle flight STS-87, from Tagore School. Not only which completed its 15-day, 16did she get a bachelor of hour, 34-minute mission on science degree in aeronautical December 5, 1997, was her first engineering from Punjab time around as Mission Engineering College, but she Specialist. She hopes to do it went on to get a master’s again. She and her teammates degree in the United States traversed 10.45 million from the University of Texas. kilometers during their trip. It She earned her Ph.D. in was an international crew, aerospace engineering from the including Mission Specialist University of Colorado in Takao Doi of the National 1988. And last November Space Development Agency of Chawla was the first Indian Japan—the first Japanese Orbiter Columbia touches down at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) American woman astronaut to astronaut to do a space walk— shuttle landing facility on December 5, 1997, after a successful sojourn blast off from the launch pad at in space. Commander Kevin Kregel and Pilot Steven Lindsey were at Ukrainian Payload Specialist Cape Canaveral, Florida, and the controls. It was the 12th landing for Columbia at KSC, and the 41st Leonid Kadenyuk of the participate in a successful National Space Agency of the KSC landing in the history of the space shuttle program. mission in space. Her family Ukraine, and three other from India cheered along with staff at the Kennedy Space Americans: Mission Commander Kevin R. Kregel, Pilot Steven Center as they watched the Columbia liftoff. Lindsey and Mission Specialist Winston Scott. The crew Chawla was born in Karnal, Haryana, but is a naturalized performed experiments as part of the Collaborative Ukrainian U.S. citizen, married to flight instructor Jean-Pierre Harrison. Experiment. Besides being an astronaut, she is licensed to fly single and Some of the experiments involved pollinating plants to multi-engine land airplanes, single-engine seaplanes and gliders. observe food growth in space and tests for making stronger She is also a certified flight instructor. After qualifying as a metals and faster computer chips—all for a price tag of about pilot in 1987, Chawla began to consider another challenge: $56 million. They also had to deal with recalcitrant satellite applying to NASA’s space shuttle program. She was hired as a Spartan, deployed by Chawla for solar observation. A research scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in malfunction gave space-walkers Doi and Scott an extra job to California in 1988, and in 1993 she joined Overset Methods, do: retrieval of the $10 million satellite. Inc., Los Altos, California, as vice president and research Now the work will continue back on the ground as scientists
24 EDITION 1 2022
