Kalpana Chawla – Biography
Kalpana Chawla was born on March 17, 1962 in Karnal, Haryana, India to a Hindu family.
Her parents were Banarasi Lal Chawla and Sangeeta Chawla respectively. Kalpana Chawla was their youngest child.
Kalpana completed her secondary education from Thakur Balniketan Senior Secondary School, Karnal. She completed her bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering from Punjab Engineering College, Chandigarh in 1982.
She moved to the United States for higher education, where she completed her postgraduate studies in aerospace engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington in 1974. Kalpana later received her PhD from the University of Colorado at Bould in 1986.
Kalpana started her career as a research scientist at NASA in 1986. In November 1998, Kalpana Chawla was appointed as the Operations Specialist and Chief Robotic Arm Operator of STS-107.
Her first space journey began on November 19, 1997. She was the first Indian woman to achieve this feat.
On February 1, 2003, while returning from space, the Columbia space shuttle crashed into the Earth's atmosphere, crashing seven crew members and killing everyone, including Kalpana. Notably the seven crew members along with Kalpana Chawla included (i) Pilot William C. McCool, (ii) Commander Rick D. Husband (iii) Payload Commander Michael P. Anderson (iv) Payload Specialist Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli astronaut (v) Mission Specialists David M. Brown and (vi)Laurel B. Clark
However, the first satellite of the MET-SAT series, ‘METSAT-1’ was launched in India on September 12, 2002 and it was renamed as ‘Kalpana-1’ on 5th February 2003 in her honor.
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