Kalpana Chawla March 17, — February 1, was an Indian American astronaut and aerospace engineer who was the first woman of Indian origin to fly to space. Chawla expressed an interest in aerospace engineering from an early age and took engineering classes at Dayal Singh College and Punjab Engineering College in India.
Her role in the flight caused some controversy due to the failed deployment of the Shuttle-Pointed Autonomous Research Tool for Astronomy "Spartan" module. She was one of the seven crew members who died in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster when the spacecraft disintegrated during its reentry into the Earth 's atmosphere on February 1, Several buildings, spacecraft, and extraterrestrial landmarks are named in her honor.
Chawla took basic engineering courses at Dayal Singh College in Karnal. She graduated from the college in with a Bachelor of Engineering BEng. Because she could not take further specialized aerospace engineering courses in India, Chawla traveled to the United States to continue her education in , again facing opposition from her father. Chawla then attended the University of Colorado Boulder CU Boulder , where she first decided that she wanted to join the space program, receiving her PhD in with the thesis Computation of dynamics and control of unsteady vortical flows.
She subsequently studied how to use multiple computers to solve fluid flow problems, testing these methods by calculating powered lift effects.
Chawla joined Overset Methods, Inc, a non-profit research organization based in Los Altos , California, as both a research scientist and the organization's vice president in Chawla's first space mission began on November 19, , as part of the six-astronaut crew that flew the Space Shuttle Columbia flight STS She served as a mission specialist and a backup flight engineer during takeoff.
