Kalpana Chawla – The Star That Shined In The Space

When I am up there, I do not feel that I belong to any particular piece of land, but I feel as if I am the resident of the Milky Way.

Kalpana Chawla

Kalpana Chawla was one of the most daring persons of the world, who took birth on the earth, to reach the heights of space and make a mark as a “Superwoman of the space”, within the shortest period of time.

She was mere 41 years of age when she had circled the earth 252 times and had completed 760 hours in space. Kalpana possessed an incredible spirit of valiance from her very childhood. She dreamt of flying in the space like a bird, courageously, without caring a bit about all the obstacles coming on her way. She wanted to become a citizen of the space. To fulfil her ambition, she joined a flying club in Karnal. Kalpana Chawla completed her doctorate in the year 1988.

In the year 1993, she became the vice president of Method Loo Altos, California. In December 1994, she got admission to the NASA AMES RESEARCH CENTRE and in March 1995, Chawla became the candidate in the 15th group of Astronauts in the Johnson Space Centre.

In 1997, while in space, she said “It is almost as if everything is in a fast forward movement. We see the vision of the moon and then it suddenly races away from us and is lost somewhere in the Earth’s curvature”.

This gutsy woman enjoyed every bit of her journey in the space. Her unfortunate death came on Feb. 2003, when the Columbia Space, carrying all the seven astronauts on board including Kalpana Chawla, exploded a few minutes before it was to land on earth. Lakhs of her fans paid tribute to her when the journalists announced her death. Her untimely death has created a vacuum in the world. She was a daring soul, who came on the earth, to live and die for a cause and the cause was to show the world of space to mankind on earth and she fulfilled her ambition before her death, at last.