MCQ Questions

Questions

Practice mode — a mixed feed of questions and articles for each subject. Prefer reading first? Browse the Articles index instead →

Articles

Study mode — the full article library for each subject, no practice questions mixed in. Want to practice instead? Browse Questions by subject →

Kalpana Chawla: First Indian-Born Woman in Space

A girl from a small town in Haryana once looked up at planes flying overhead and decided she’d fly further than any of them. She did.

📑 Contents

17 March 1962: Kalpana Chawla is born in Karnal, India.
She earns an aeronautical engineering degree from Punjab Engineering College, Chandigarh, then moves to the United States for further study.
December 1994: She joins NASA’s Astronaut Corps.
19 November 1997: She launches on STS-87, aboard Space Shuttle Columbia, becoming the first Indian-born woman in space.
16 January 2003: Her second mission, STS-107, launches.
1 February 2003: Columbia disintegrates during re-entry. Chawla and all six of her crewmates die.

Kalpana Chawla was the first Indian-born woman in space.
She was born on 17 March 1962, in Karnal, India.
She earned an aeronautical engineering degree from Punjab Engineering College, before moving to the US for graduate study.
She joined NASA’s Astronaut Corps in December 1994.
Her first mission, STS-87, aboard Space Shuttle Columbia, launched on 19 November 1997.
She died on 1 February 2003, when Columbia disintegrated during re-entry, on her second mission, STS-107.

She earned a Master’s in aerospace engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington, and a PhD in aerospace engineering from the University of Colorado Boulder. She became a naturalised US citizen.
On STS-87, she served as a mission specialist, and the flight’s prime robotic-arm operator.
Her second mission, STS-107, launched on 16 January 2003, for a 16-day science mission. All seven crew members died when Columbia broke apart during re-entry.
Across both missions, she logged just over 31 days in space.
She was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, in 2004.
India honoured her in several ways. PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee renamed the MetSat-1 satellite “Kalpana-1” in her memory. The Karnataka government also instituted the Kalpana Chawla Award, for young women scientists.

Chawla’s path, from a small-town Haryana upbringing to NASA’s astronaut corps, is often cited to highlight India’s aerospace talent reaching global institutions, not just domestic ones.
The Columbia disaster led to a lengthy suspension of NASA’s Space Shuttle programme, and a wide-ranging investigation into the shuttle’s heat-shield design. It directly shaped later shuttle-safety reforms.
Naming a functioning Indian satellite after her, within weeks of her death, was an unusually fast and concrete tribute. Most posthumous honours, like awards or buildings, usually take far longer to materialise.