Vidyarthi Vigyan Manthan: A national programme to ... - Vigyan Prasar

Kalpana Chawla
Kalpana Chawla was born on 1 July 1961 in Haryana’s Karnal district.
She was inspired by India’s first pilot J R D Tata and always wanted to
fly. She did her schooling from Karnal’s Tagore School, and later studied
aeronautical engineering from Panjab University. To give wings to her
aeronautical dream, she moved to America. After obtaining an MSc
degree in aerospace engineering from University of Texas in 1984, four
years later, Chawla earned a doctorate in aerospace engineering from
University of Colorado. In the same year, she started working at NASA’s
Ames Research Center. Soon, Chawla became a US citizen and married
Jean-Pierre Harrison, a freelance flying instructor. She also took keen
interest in flying, hiking, gliding, travelling and reading. She loved flying
aerobatics, tail-wheel airplanes. She was a strict vegetarian and was an
avid music lover.
Chawla joined NASA’s space programme in 1994 and her first
mission to space began on 19 November 1997 as part of a 6-astronaut
crew on Space Shuttle Columbia flight STS-87. She logged more than
375 hours in space, as she travelled over 10.4 million kilometres in 252
orbits of the Earth during her first flight. While onboard, she was in
charge of deploying the malfunctioning Spartan satellite. Interestingly,