Kalpana Chawla was an American astronaut, engineer, and the first woman of Indian descent to go to space.
She first flew on Space Shuttle Columbia in 1997 as a mission specialist and primary robotic arm operator.
In 2003, Chawla was one of the seven crew members who died in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster when the spacecraft disintegrated during its re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere.
Kalpana Chawla was born on 17 March 1962, in Karnal, Haryana, India. As a child, she was fascinated by aeroplanes and flying. She went to local flying clubs and watched planes with her father. After getting a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Aeronautical Engineering from Punjab Engineering College, India, she moved to the United States in 1982 and obtained a Master of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington in 1984. Chawla went on to earn a second Masters in 1986 and a PhD in aerospace engineering in 1988 from the University of Colorado Boulder.
In 1988, she began working at NASA Ames Research Center, where she did computational fluid dynamics research. After becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen in April 1991, Chawla applied for the NASA Astronaut Corps. She joined the corps in March 1995 and was selected for her first flight in 1996. Her first space mission began on 19 November 1997, she was the first Indian woman to go in space. On her first mission, Chawla traveled over 10.4 million miles in 252 orbits of the earth, logging more than 372 hours in space. In 2001, Chawla was selected for her second flight as part of the crew of STS-107. This mission was repeatedly delayed due to scheduling conflicts and technical defects. On 16 January 2003, Chawla finally returned to space aboard Space Shuttle Columbia on the ill-fated STS-107 mission. During this mission a piece of foam insulation broke off from the Space Shuttle external tank and struck the left-wing of the orbiter. When Columbia re-entered the atmosphere of Earth, the damage allowed hot atmospheric gases to penetrate and destroy the internal wing structure, which caused the spacecraft to become unstable and break apart. Chawla died on 1 February 2003,