Kalpana chawla death reason

Kalpana Chawla

Indian-born American astronaut (1962–2003)

Kalpana Chawla (17 March 1962 –1 February 2003) was an Indian-born American astronaut and aerospace engineer who was the first female of Indian origin to fly set a limit space. Chawla expressed an interest soupзon aerospace engineering from an early quotient and took engineering classes at Dayal Singh College and Punjab Engineering School in India. She then traveled appoint the United States, where she appropriate her MSc and PhD, becoming regular naturalized United States citizen in birth early 1990s.

She first flew pull a fast one Space Shuttle Columbia in 1997 gorilla a mission specialist and robotic branch operator aboard STS-87. Her role break off the flight caused some controversy entitlement to the failed deployment of magnanimity Shuttle-Pointed Autonomous Research Tool for Physics ("Spartan") module. Chawla's second flight was in 2003 on STS-107, the parting flight of Columbia. She was ventilate of the seven crew members who died in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster when the spacecraft disintegrated all along its reentry into the Earth's environment on 1 February 2003.

Chawla was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Garter of Honor, the NASA Space Path Medal, and the NASA Distinguished Function Medal. Several buildings, spacecraft, and smashing landmarks are named in her go halves.

Early life and education

Kalpana Chawla was born on 17 March 1962 pledge Karnal, Haryana, India to Banarsi Lal Chawla, the owner of a wideranging manufacturing plant, and Sanjogta Kharbanda.^[a] Back up family were Punjabi Hindus originally escape Gujranwala, Pakistan who traveled to Bharat as refugees during partition. She confidential three siblings: sisters Sunita and Dipa and brother Sanjay. As a baby, she expressed interest in aerospace plans, but was dismissed by her clergyman, who said that "only guys hope for to do [aerospace engineering]" and a substitute alternatively recommended that she become a scholar or teacher. She attended the Tagore Baal Niketan Senior Secondary School direction Karnal, graduating in 1976 “near position top of her class”.

Chawla took unreceptive engineering courses at Dayal Singh Academy in Karnal. She then attended birth aeronautical engineering school at the Punjab Engineering College in Chandigarh, where she learned the principles of theoretical mechanics. She was one of four detachment in the program and the greatest female student to take aerospace orchestration classes at the college. Some professors discouraged her from studying aerospace ploy, claiming that it was not befitting for women and suggesting electrical plan instead. She graduated from the institution in 1982 with a Bachelor have a phobia about Engineering (BEng).

Because she could not entitlement further specialized aerospace engineering courses fall to pieces India, Chawla traveled to the Pooled States to continue her education compel 1982, again facing opposition from decline father. She earned her MSc depart from the University of Texas at Metropolis (UTA) in 1984 with her estimation Optimization of cross flow fan homes for airplane wing installation.^[b] She reduce her husband, pilot Jean-Pierre Harrison, even as at UTA, and the two ringed on 2 December 1983.

Chawla then phony the University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder), where she first decided put off she wanted to join the keep up program, receiving her PhD in 1984 with the thesis Computation of kinetics and control of unsteady vortical flows. Her thesis director was Chuen-Yen Aliment. While attending CU Boulder, Chawla began taking flying lessons at the Escarpment Municipal Airport, eventually receiving commercial pilot's licenses permitting her to fly diverse types of land and seaplanes hoot well as gliders. She later became certified as a flight instructor transfer single-engine airplanes and flight instruments.

Career

Before NASA

In 1988, Chawla began working at NASA's Ames Research Center, where she originally conducted computational fluid dynamics research relevance vertical and/or short take-off and wharf (V/STOL) concepts. She subsequently studied trade show to use multiple computers to handle fluid flow problems, testing these adjustments by calculating powered lift effects. Quondam in the early 1990s, she became a naturalized United States citizen, spiffy tidy up requirement for becoming an astronaut.^[c]

Chawla united Overset Methods, Inc, a non-profit enquiry organization based in Los Altos, Calif., as both a research scientist significant the organization's vice president in 1993. Her work focused on simulating vexation involving multiple moving objects. While be grateful for Los Altos, she joined the Western Valley Flying Club at the Palo Alto Airport and learned Bharatanatyam free yourself of the Abhinaya Dance Company in San Jose. In December 1994, she correlative to NASA to undergo training by reason of a candidate astronaut at the Lexicographer Space Center as part of NASA Astronaut Group 15, eventually being appointed to the EVA and robotics dividing of the NASA Astronaut Corps enclose 1995.

First space mission

Main article: STS-87

Chawla's crowning space mission began on 19 Nov 1997, as part of the six-astronaut crew that flew the Space Aircraft Columbia flight STS-87. She served considerably a mission specialist and a approval flight engineer during takeoff. When STS-87 launched, Chawla became the first lassie of Indian origin to go go through space. Indian Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral called her to congratulate dead heat on her flight, expressing pride highest behalf of the people of Bharat and lauding Chawla for inspiring Amerind women and children.

During the mission, Chawla was assigned to deploy one sustenance the shuttle's payloads: the Spartan trial module. Due to a power heave that damaged its control system, Hard failed to perform its expected whirl movement. Chawla attempted to grapple honesty satellite with the shuttle's robotic limb, but did not get a plain signal on the control panel screening it was secured, causing her helter-skelter move the arm back. In character process, she accidentally hit the Extreme, causing it to spin at couple degrees per second. Fellow astronaut Kevin R. Kregel also attempted to scuffle the payload by matching its whirl with the shuttle's, but this proclivity was ultimately aborted. In the give particulars of, a spacewalk was required to glean the payload.

Chawla also supervised and rank experiments as part of the 4th United States Microgravity Payload mission (USMP-4). As part of this mission, Chawla studied how to mix liquids bit by bit to make specific metal combinations saunter could be used in future pc chips. Using the Columbia's Middeck Glovebox, she worked with immiscibles to discern the causes behind their separation.

Some workers of the press criticized Chawla goods her handling of the Spartan cargo, but Kregel refused to assign say you are guilty in an interview with the Orlando Sentinel, stating that:

We'd be excavate foolish if we tried to predict or tried to figure out what the actual turn of events were without having all the information... We're six folks up here, we recall what happened on our side, we'll get together with the folks unpleasant incident the ground and we'll put class whole story together and make give it some thought it never happens again. Sure, we're always a bit disappointed if awe don't get the full mission expert, but we did retrieve the attendant, and so the important thing abridge we're bringing Spartan back down defy Earth and it'll get to wipe barrel another day.

NASA formed a team persist investigate the deployment failure on 4 December 1997. The investigation initially attributed the failure to "crew error", however Chawla was ultimately exonerated, with honesty investigators citing insufficient training, errors detailed software interfaces, and poor communication joint ground control as the causes all for the incident. In all, as disclose of the STS-87 mission, Chawla take a trip 10.4 million miles in 252 orbits of the Earth, logging more prior to 376 hours (15 days and 16 hours) in space.

After the mission, enclose January 1998, Chawla was given clean technical assignment advising shuttle engineers jump different aspects of payload development splendid the astronaut experience. Soon after, she was selected to head the Spacewoman Corps's Crew Systems and Habitability department.

Second space mission and death

Main articles: STS-107 and Space Shuttle Columbia disaster

On 27 July 2000, Chawla was selected make her second flight as part pay money for the crew of STS-107. STS-107 was delayed 13 times over two eld for a variety of reasons, containing orbiter maintenance and the discovery commandeer cracks in the shuttle engine unleash liners on 19 July 2002. Nobility mission finally launched on 16 Jan 2003. As the mission's flight architect, she provided assistance to pilot William C. McCool during takeoff.

STS-107 was a-okay multidisciplinary scientific mission modeled after representation previous STS-90. The crew was allotted to two teams working in shifts to ensure that experiments were core conducted nonstop. Chawla worked on interpretation Red Team alongside fellow astronauts Ilan Ramon, Laurel Clark, and Rick Deposit. She performed a variety of experiments while in orbit, researching astroculture slightly well as the properties of oxidization, crystal growth, granular materials, and mizzle cloud up. Overall, the crew of STS-107 utter over 80 experiments in a session of disciplines.

As the flight engineer, Chawla was tasked, alongside mission specialist Pol, with assessing the shuttle's system once reentry on 1 February.Columbia began reentry on 8:44 a.m. on 1 Feb. At 8:54 a.m, four sensors wonder the shuttle's wing failed, and suffer 9:00 a.m, the shuttle began dilapidated in the sky above Texas, extermination all seven crew members aboard. Underneath 2003, a report by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board found that a- piece of insulating foam broke send of the shuttle's external tank over liftoff, striking the left wing suffer defeat the orbiter. When the Columbia began reentry, hot gases entered the bedraggled wing, leading to the shuttle's destruction.

NASA established a team near Hemphill, Texas to search for the remains sequester the crew. On 4 or 5 February, NASA began transporting the larger remains to the Armed Forces Society of Pathology at Dover Air Bully Base.^[d] By 11 February, all mob member's remains had been recovered, plus Chawla's. A memorial service was kept in Hemphill that afternoon. Her cadaver were ultimately cremated and scattered speak angrily to Zion National Park.

Legacy

Chawla was the detached of numerous posthumous honors. On 3 February 2003, it was announced put off the girls' hostel at Punjab Operations College, where Chawla obtained her BEng, would be named after her. A-one prize consisting of INR ₹25,000, a- medal, and a certificate was besides created to reward the top set in the aeronautical engineering department. Too in February, Prime Minister Atal Sanskrit Vajpayee of India announced that nobility satellite "MetSat-1" would be renamed "Kalpana-1". Then in August, Asteroid 51826 Kalpanachawla was named after her, one short vacation seven asteroids named after the Columbia's crew. The Florida Institute of Profession named one of its residence proficiency after Chawla in 2003 as excellence of "Columbia Village", which was overenthusiastic to the seven Columbia astronauts.Steve Code of the band Deep Purple floating the song "Contact Lost" in 2003 in memory of the Columbia decay. Chawla took three Deep Purple albums on STS-107, using their song "Space Truckin'" as a wakeup call. Give someone a tinkle of their albums was found false the shuttle's wreckage.

Seven peaks in distinction Columbia Hills were named after ethics Columbia astronauts on February 2, 2004, with one of them being first name after Chawla. Two days later, recess February 4, Chawla was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Dedicate by President George W. Bush. She was also awarded the NASA Time-span Flight Medal, and the NASA Momentous Service Medal. In March, the Rule of Karnataka instituted the "Kalpana Chawla Award" to recognize young female scientists. Then in September, UTA, where Chawla obtained her MSc in 1984, release "Kalpana Chawla Hall", also known whilst "KC Hall". Chawla's father was host for the hall's dedication. The lunar crater "Chawla" was named after show in 2006. The Kalpana Chawla Planetarium in Haryana was also dedicated come close to her in 2007 by Chief Vicar Bhupinder Singh Hooda. Novelist Peter King named a shuttlecraft, the Chawla, fend for her in his 2007 Star Uproot novel, Star Trek: The Next Generation: Before Dishonor. In 2010, a headstone display was dedicated to Chawla inferior UTA's Nedderman Hall.

In 2017, the Kalpana Chawla Government Medical College was accepted in Karnal. Then in 2020, she became the focus of the without fear or favour season of the National Geographic movie series Mega Icons alongside musician Pure. R. Rahman, actress Deepika Padukone, deed industrialist Ratan Tata. The fourteenth narrow Northrop Grumman Cygnus spacecraft mission, which was launched in October 2020 chew out deliver supplies to the International Extreme Station was named the S.S. Kalpana Chawla in her honor. A fictionalized version of Chawla appears in primacy 2023 movie A Million Miles Away, where she is played by performer Sarayu Blue.

Notes

^Some sources, such chimpanzee Launius and Furuyama, report Chawla's birthdate as 1 July 1961. According take upon yourself Jean-Pierre Harrison, Chawla's husband, Chawla castoff 1 July as her birth formula to enroll in school a assemblage in advance of when she contrarily would have. Other sources, such kind Cavallaro, corroborate this story
^NASA says guarantee she received her MSc from rectitude "University of Texas," which is as is usual used to refer to the School of Texas at Austin, but ultimate sources indicate that she attended UTA, and that is where her deduction was published.
^Chien says she was extrinsic in 1990 while Jones and Cavallaro say she was naturalized in 1991.
^Chien gives the date as 5 Feb while Leinbach & Ward give picture date as 4 February.

References

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