2/01/2008

Kalpana Chawla, 1961-2003


Five years ago, Shuttle mission STS-107 was lost over the skies of Texas. I remember that morning clear as day. I've got a memoriam post at my geekblog for the mission as a whole, but I wanted to also make special note here of Indian astronaut Kalpana Chawla, who also perished aboard Columbia as a member of the crew and India's first female in space.

Wikipedia notes that Kalpana in Sanskrit means "imagination of the mind" and thus also "creation".

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Aziz,

She and others deserved to be remembered.

Kalpana was born in India, and was once an Indian citizen. She came from a small village in India

When she flew shuttle for NASA, she had become a naturalized American.

The first Indian in space was Rakesh Sharma.