Famous Women Engineers in History – Book 11: Kalpana “KC” Chawla – A Drive to Fly
FREE to IEEE Members
Non-Members: $2.99
Kalpana “KC” Chawla was born in Karnal, India on 17 March 1962. Chawla was fascinated by flight early in childhood. She loved to draw pictures of airplanes, visit local flying clubs, and watch planes with her father. She had a childhood admiration for J.R.D. Tata, the founder of Tata Airlines (later to become Air India) and chairperson of the Tata Group. (She carried a photo of him on her first space mission in 1997).
She was the first woman to enroll in the aeronautical engineering program and only the fourth woman to study engineering at Punjab Engineering College. Professors tried to dissuade her, explaining society offered limited opportunities for girls in engineering — and especially aeronautical engineering. Chawla was adamant that this was the subject for her.
After graduating, and over the objections of her father, Chawla enrolled in a masters program at the University of Texas, Arlington. When asked why she left India, she remarked: “I came to America because it’s the best place in the world for aviation. It’s that simple.”
On her second day in America, she met Jean-Pierre Harrison, a freelance flying instructor. They quickly discovered their mutual passion for flying and would fly planes and attend air shows together. They eventually married.
Chawla completed her masters in aerospace engineering and went on to earn her Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from the University of Colorado-Boulder. After getting her doctorate, Chawla joined the NASA Ames Research Center. Her work focused on understanding how air flows around aircraft during flight. Chawla became a United States citizen in 1991. She tried twice to be an astronaut, and on the second try, in 1994, she was selected. Her father found out by reading it on the front page of the New Delhi newspaper.
NASA chose Chawla to be a crew member on Space Shuttle Columbia’s 24th and 28th missions. When Columbia launched on 19 November 1997, Chawla became the first Indian woman, and the first South Asian American woman, to fly in space. In a 1998 interview with India Today, Chawla said she never thought about being “the first or second someone” in space. “When you look at the stars and the galaxy, you feel that you are not just from any particular piece of land, but from the solar system.”
During the mission, Chawla used the robotic arm to deploy the Spartan Satellite, designed to observe the sun’s outer atmosphere and solar winds. The launch did not go well. The satellite failed to execute a maneuver, and as Chawla attempted to guide the satellite back to the cargo bay, it tumbled out of control. Other crew members were able to retrieve the satellite during a spacewalk. NASA investigated and determined that the project’s failure was the result of a series of small errors and absolved Chawla of responsibility.
Her second Columbia mission, after two years of delays, launched 16 January 2003. During analysis of launch films, engineers noted that a piece of foam insulation released from the Shuttle’s External Tank struck Columbia’s left wing. NASA informed the crew that it was nothing to worry about.
The crew completed 80 experiments for the space agencies of Europe, Canada, and Germany as well as for the US Air Force and several universities. The crew worked in shifts, conducting research around the clock. Timed to the flight, India Today featured Chawla on its cover with the banner “The Global Indian Doing Us Proud.”
On 1 February 2003, 16 minutes from landing at Kennedy Space Center, Mission Control lost contact with Columbia. Tiles, damaged at launch, overheated. The internal structure of the wing melted, and the Shuttle broke apart. There were no survivors.
As a result of the accident, NASA put the Space Shuttles program on hold for more than two years and NASA eventually decided to phase out the program upon the completion of the international space station.
In the She Persisted series book, Kalpana Chawla, Raakhee Mirchandani summarizes Chawla’s life: “Her dreams born in Karnal, blossomed in America. She was determined to achieve her goals, and when she succeeded, she set new, tougher goals for herself. She was an astronaut, a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a friend, a scientist, an immigrant, a birdwatcher, a nature-lover, a pilot, and a reader. She was a bright star.”
Chawla received numerous honors in both the US and India, including the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, The NASA space Flight Medal, and Congressional Space Medal of Honor. In India, a medical school, scholarships, and a planetarium were named in her honor. At the Punjab Engineering College, which had no provision for housing women when Chawla attended, they named the women’s dorm in her honor.
You can learn more about Kalpana Chawla by downloading the E-book Kalpana “KC” Chawla: A Drive to Fly. Also available are the other ten books in the Famous Women Engineers in History series at the IEEE-USA bookstore. They are free for members (a small cost for non-members).
Note: IEEE-USA is considering launching a new series on lesser-known successes in engineering. Do you know of such successes (by a person or by a team) that deserve to be better known? Send suggestions to PLRosengren@gmail.com.
