Aparita

The Toronto Star

Kalpana Chawla

Special to the Star

To the press in the land of her birth, Kalpana Chawla was “India’s worthy daughter.” With the death of the 41-yearold flight engineer, she has become a martyr for space exploration.

Although a naturalized American citizen, she was celebrated for being the second Indian in space after Rakesh Sharma, who flew with the Russian program.

As a youngster in her native Karnal, India, Chawla would join her brother for long bicycle rides that often took them close to a local flying club. She recalled a fascination with the light planes as they took off and landed and credited the experience with eventually leading her into the field of aerospace engineering, her stepping stone to the astronaut corps. Chawla, who earned a master’s degree in aerospace engineering from University of Texas, was making her second space trip.

“I’m looking forward to the flight, of course. After you go to space once, you sort of get addicted, you want to have the same experience,” she explained to reporters at a Jan. 3 pre-flight news conference. “That’s precisely what I feel, especially the part about looking at the Earth, looking at the stars. Doing it again is like having a good dream once again.”

Those bicycle rides with her brother eventually convinced Chawla’s father to secure a ride in a plane and glider for his daughter.

She combined the experience with an interest in a pioneering Indian aviator.

By the time she was in high school, Chawla was determined to become an aerospace engineer.
After earning a bachelor’s degree in the field at the Punjab Engineering College, Chawla pursued graduate work in aerospace first at the University of Texas then at the University of Colorado, where she earned a doctorate in 1988.

Chawla began her professional career at NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffit Field, Calif., where she characterized the air flows around high performance aircraft.

Trained as an aerobatic pilot, Chawla was selected by NASA for astronaut training in 1994.
Three years later Chawla participated in her first space flight.

“She had the passion for space exploration,” said Laura Woodmansee, a Canadian writer who interviewed Chawla in May, 2002, for a book on women astronauts.

“She was very excited and youthful, like a kid in a candy shop. She just loved her job and when she talked about the (Columbia) mission she just lit up inside.”

Chawla, who was married to Jean Pierre Harrison, a flight instructor who lives in Texas, had cut her waist-length hair to her shoulders before the flight to prevent it from floating in front of her face while in orbit.

“She was really into the future,” Woodmansee said. “She talked about wanting to put a scientific base on the moon. She was your true space geek.”

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