Kalpana Chawla

Kalpana Chawla (March 17, 1962 – February 1, 2003) was an Indian-born American astronaut, aerospace engineer, and pilot who was the first woman of Indian heritage to fly into space. Chawla participated in two spaceflights, STS-87 and STS-107, in 1997 and 2003, respectively. On both of these flights, she conducted scientific experiments researching the effects of microgravity on various physical processes. When the crew members in STS-107 descended back to Earth, the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated due to damage it sustained at liftoff. This killed all seven astronauts on board, including Chawla.

Chawla was born in Karnal, Haryana, India, to Banarsi Lal Chawla and Sanjyothi Chawla. She had three older siblings: Sunita, Dipa, and Sanjay Chawla. Chawla developed an interest in crewed flight after observing a plane passing over her at the age of three, deciding that she wanted to become an aerospace engineer at the age of 12. She attended Tagore Baal Niketan Senior Secondary School and, after graduating from there, Dayal Singh College. Despite opposition from her father, she transferred from the college to take engineering classes at Punjab Engineering College, from which she obtained a Bachelor of Engineering (BEng). She then emigrated to the United States, where she obtained her MSc from the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) and her PhD from the University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder). While at CU Boulder, she obtained various pilot licenses, Instrument ratings, and flight instructor certificates. She became a naturalized US citizen in the early 1990s.

Chawla's professional career began when she was hired to work at NASA's Ames Research Center in 1988. There, she conducted research into computational fluid dynamics. She then joined Overset Methods, Inc., becoming the vice president of the organization in 1993. In 1994, she returned to NASA in the hopes of becoming an astronaut, undergoing a year of training before being assigned as a mission specialist and robotic arm operator in her first space mission, STS-87. Her performance in the mission caused some controversy due to the failed deployment of the Shuttle-Pointed Autonomous Research Tool for Astronomy (SPARTAN) module.