Kalpana Chawla was born into a culture that didn’t necessarily share the big plans she had for herself.
Born in Karnal, India in 1961, the youngest of four, a future as wife and mother was expected by society. But Chawla – K.C. to her friends – had loftier goals. She wanted to fly – all the way to the stars.
Opinionated, quick with a comeback, curious, and unapologetically confident, Chawla’s family supported her pursuit of education. Her mother, Sanjyothi Chawla, in particular insisted that her daughters never compromise on their schooling. At this time this was a somewhat radical stance to take as educating girls and women was seen as an “unnecessary luxury”.
Focused and hardworking through her schooling – her eyes always trained on the airplanes flying overhead from Karnal’s Aviation Club – she decided to pursue to engineering in college. However, this proved easier said than done.
Despite her father, Banarsi Lal Chawla, being supportive of her education, he felt that engineering was not an appropriate profession for a woman. He asked her instead to become a doctor or school teacher. However Chawla persisted and with the support of her mother, headed off to study at Punjab Engineering College in Chandigarh. Eventually, her father relented and lent his support to his youngest daughter.
But her father was only her first hurdle when pursing engineering. Upon arriving at the college, administrators attempted to dissuade Chawla from pursuing the field of aeronautical engineering. At the time, there were no women in the program and counselors attempted to convince her that electrical engineering was a “far better choice” for a woman.
Again, Chawla persisted and became the first woman to enroll in Punjab Engineering College’s aeronautical engineering program in 1978. She was “one of the first four girls to undertake any type of engineering program at Punjab Engineering College.” (1)
Aside from some hazing from senior students and having no women’s dormitory to live in so she lived alone over a garage, Chawla threw herself not only into her studies, but also literature, music, and karate. She earned a black belt.
Chawla graduated from college in 1982, becoming the first woman aeronautical engineer granted a degree from the institution. She briefly took a job as a lecturer at the very college that had initially tried to thwart her.
She soon moved to Texas to attend the University of Texas at Arlington where she pursued a masters degree in aerospace engineering. It was while in Arlington, she that she moved in down the hall from her future husband, flight instructor and author Jean-Pierre Harrison.
Chawla obtained her master’s degree from the University of Texas in 1984, and then moved to Boulder, Colorado to pursue her Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from the University of Colorado. While living in Boulder, she also finally started taking aviation lessons and got her Private Pilot License eventually earning a Commercial Pilot License. She was one step closer to the stars.
Upon receiving her Ph.D. in 1988, Chawla went to work at NASA Ames Research Center in Sunnyvale, California as a contractor until she became a United States citizen.
In 1993, Chawla applied to the NASA Astronaut Corps, and in December 1994, she sent her husband, away in Kentucky at the time, the two word message, “I’m in.”
After almost two years of physical and psychological training, Chawla was eligible for “space flight assignments” in the spring of 1996. In November of that year, she was chosen for the STS-87 crew as Mission Specialist 1 (MS-1) and backup engineer for ascent. Part of her job was to be the prime operator of a robotic arm.
November 19, 1997 Chawla became the first Indian-American woman, and second Indian-American person to go into space. In 15 days Chawla logged 252 orbits around the earth and a distance 6.5 million miles traveled. Though a mishap occurred with the Spartan satellite that Chawla was charged with deploying, delaying the mission, Chawla was absolved of fault by NASA and complimented on her performance during the mission.
When asked by India Today what was a defining moment for her while in space, Chawla replied:
The sunrise and sunsets. It is almost as if everything is in fast forward. It is totally dark. Then dark to violet, to orange and red-all this right at the thin band of atmosphere-and then it’s sunrise. At the sunset, there was a moon-its crescent was razor sharp and the colour was dusty silvery. Then the moon raced away from us and was lost in the glow of the earth’s curvature. Almost like a story book that you read as a child. Gosh, I enjoyed every moment up there.
Chawla would get another chance to return to space.
In the summer of 2000, Chawla was offered a position on the crew of the STS-107 mission aboard the space shuttle Columbia.
It would be Columbia’s and Chawla’s last mission.
Launched January 16, 2003, the mission was largely a success with important information transmitted to earth as well as recovered from the wreckage. Before the fateful day that Columbia re-entered the earth’s atmosphere, Chawla not only spoke with the former Prime Minister of India I.K. Gujral but she also got to communicate with her family from the space shuttle. The last time most of her family in India spoke to her, “she held up a photograph of her family into the camera and said, ‘I’m carrying all of you with me,'” her husband told the New York Times.
On February 1, 2003 Columbia broke up during re-entry into earth’s atmosphere. A malfunction caused Columbia to enter the atmosphere “belly first” while rotating, yawing, out of control to the left. The crew fought for 41 seconds to regain control of the space craft.
According to Harrison, with information from NASA, the crew didn’t even put down their helmet visors – their deaths were nearly instant when the cabin disintegrated over East Texas.
When Harrison received his wife’s death certificate, it read that her place of death was “airspace over Texas”; somehow that was very apt for such an adventurer. Said Harrison, “She would say that if she had to go, going in the shuttle was not a bad way to go.”
Kalpana Chawla received the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, NASA Space Flight Medal, NASA Distinguished Service Medal, the University of Colorado at Boulder instituted The Kalpana Chawla Outstanding Recent Alumni Award, the University of Texas at Arlington dedicated a memorial to her, the Kalpana Chawla Government Medical College for women was established in her hometown of Karnal, 74th Street in Queens, New York was renamed Kalpana Chawla Way, and The Kalpana Chawla Award was created by the Government of Karnataka to recognize young women scientists.
These are just a few of the awards and honors Kalpana Chawla received before and after her death.
Most fittingly, an asteroid was named after her, 51826 Kalpana Chawla, and a satellite launched by India was renamed Kalpana-1. The girl from Karnal who persisted, who defied exceptions, will now always have a place in the stars.
Said Chawla on how going into space had changed her outlook on life:
I really feel responsible for the earth now. There are so many people who are arguing or fighting over issues which don’t have much relevance. We must all realise it is not worth it. It’s like being in the whirlpools which are always present behind a little rock near a river. We seem to be living in these little whirlpools and forget that there is a whole river. The picture is much bigger. We should take time to look at the big picture.
For many young women in India and around the world, Kalpana Chawla showed them how big their world – their universe – could be.
(1) The Edge of Time: The Authoritative Biography of Kalpana Chawla, Jean-Pierre Harrison, 2011.