Kalpana Chawla was born into a Hindu family in Karnal, Haryana, India.[1] Kalpana in Sanskrit means "idea" or "imagination". Her interest in flying was inspired by J. R. D. Tata, a pioneering Indian pilot and industrialist[2][3]. She met her husband, Jean-Pierre Harrison, a flying instructor and aviation writer, at the University of Colorado where she pursued her doctorate.[4]

[edit] Education

Kalpana Chawla studied aeronautical engineering at Punjab Engineering College in Chandigarh, India, in 1982 where she earned her Bachelor of Science degree. She was one of the three women in the college at the time. 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 (1984). Chawla earned a second Master of Science degree in mechanical engineering in 1986 and a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering in 1988 from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Later that year she began working for NASA Ames Research ...more

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Kalpana Chawla (Hindi: )(Punjabi: ) (7 March 1962 1 February 2003), was an Indian-born American astronaut and space shuttle mission specialist. She was one of seven crewmembers lost aboard Space Shuttle Columbia during mission STS-107 when the shuttle disintegrated upon reentry into the Earth's atmosphere. Kalpana Chawla is a posthumous recipient of the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.

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