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20 years after Columbia explosion, UTA remembers NASA astronaut, alum Kalpana Chawla

Chawla received her masters degree from UTA in 1984, and became the first Indian-born woman to go to space.

Update:
We're bringing this story back on the 21st anniversary of the space shuttle Columbia disaster.

Twenty years after NASA’s Columbia space shuttle exploded over Texas, the University of Texas at Arlington continues to honor the legacy of one of its prominent alumni.

Kalpana Chawla became the first Indian-born woman to go to space in 1997. She graduated from UTA in 1984 with a master’s degree in aerospace engineering, and spent hot summers working on her thesis research in an old aerodynamics lab with advisor Don Wilson.

“I always joked that we got her ready for some of the survival training courses she had to go through as an astronaut,” he said.

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On Feb. 1, 2003, NASA’s space shuttle Columbia broke apart as it reentered Earth’s atmosphere. Seven astronauts, including Chawla, died onboard. She was 40 years old.

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At UTA, a scholarship in Chawla’s name is awarded annually to outstanding graduate students who study aerospace engineering. A residence hall bearing her name was built in 2004.

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Chawla is remembered as a trailblazer and an inspiration to aspiring Indian and Indian-American scientists. Wilson, now a professor and associate chair of UTA’s mechanical and aerospace engineering department, remembers her as a hardworking student who went by KC to friends.

“As long as I teach, you deal with a lot of students … some of them you stay in touch with, and some of them you never hear from again,” Wilson said. “She was one that we stayed in touch with, and I was always glad that we were able to do that.”

‘She ... had a real desire to make something of herself’

Chawla was born in Karnal, India, in 1962. She watched planes soar through the air at the local flying club with her father, sparking her interest in the sky and stars. After graduating from Punjab Engineering College in India with a degree in aeronautical engineering, she immigrated to the United States to pursue her master’s degree at UTA.

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Don Wilson taught Kalpana Chawla when she was a master's student at the University of Texas...
Don Wilson taught Kalpana Chawla when she was a master's student at the University of Texas at Arlington. "She really had an indomitable spirit," he said.(Randy Gentry / Randy Gentry/@randygentry)

Wilson first met Chawla briefly in a gym crowded with tables during class registration. He got to know her better when he taught her in two graduate classes.

“When I first met her, she seemed very shy,” he recalled. “But the more I got to know her, she seemed to quickly adapt to life in this country.”

Chawla asked if she could complete her thesis research with Wilson as a mentor, and he agreed. She used a cross-flow fan — similar to one you’d see in home appliances — to develop a system for a plane’s wing to create thrust and increase the plane’s lift in the air. She was a high-spirited, driven student, Wilson said. “She was very hardworking, conscientious and had a real desire to make something of herself.”

After graduating from UTA, Chawla earned her doctorate in aerospace engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder in 1988. She worked at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California for a few years before joining Overset Methods Inc. in California as vice president and research scientist. In 1994, NASA selected her as an astronaut candidate.

Wilson and Chawla kept in touch after her graduation. He said he doesn’t remember her wanting to become an astronaut when he mentored her at UTA, but he found out when a graduate student showed him a front-page article in an Indian newspaper about her being selected into the astronaut corps. She was the second UTA grad to become an astronaut after Robert L. Stewart in 1979.

For her first launch in 1997, Chawla invited Wilson to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to watch from a VIP viewing stand a few miles from the launch site. She became the first Indian-born woman to go to space.

Kalpana Chawla visited UTA's Fort Worth Riverbend Campus to give a presentation on her first...
Kalpana Chawla visited UTA's Fort Worth Riverbend Campus to give a presentation on her first space voyage in 1997. Chawla, who is seen wearing a blue NASA astronaut flight suit with a Group XV 1995 patch on her right arm, earned a Master of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering at UTA in 1984.(Nathan Whitaker / UTA Special Collections)
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UTA invited her back to campus several times to honor her accomplishments. She was inducted into UTA’s College of Engineering’s Hall of Achievement, which rewards superior performance by an engineer, in 1998. Wilson and his wife, Pat, celebrated over dinner with her afterward.

Wilson said Chawla was also invited to campus by UTA’s Society of Women Engineers to encourage high school girls to pursue STEM careers. From backstage, he watched her speak at a luncheon where she shared pictures from space and advised the girls to work hard and make their ambitions a reality.

“She had 300 or 400 young ladies just wrapped around her finger,” he said. “They were just listening [to] every word she said.”

Wilson had planned to attend Chawla’s second launch aboard the Columbia space shuttle on Jan. 16, 2003, but he came down with a stomach virus and was unable to attend.

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Chawla’s legacy

STS-107 crew members aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia. This picture was on a roll of...
STS-107 crew members aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia. This picture was on a roll of unprocessed film later recovered by searchers from the debris. From the left (bottom row), wearing red shirts to signify their shift's color, are mission specialist Kalpana Chawla, commander Rick D. Husband, mission commander Laurel B. Clark and Ilan Ramon, payload specialist. From the left (top row), wearing blue shirts, are mission specialist David M. Brown, pilot William C. McCool and payload commander Michael P. Anderson. (NASA via AP, File)(Uncredited / ASSOCIATED PRESS)

On Feb. 1, 2003, Wilson and his wife took their golden retriever for a morning walk. The Columbia shuttle was scheduled to fly over Texas before landing at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. As they looked into the sky, they heard a loud boom.

Wilson remembers seeing multiple streaks trailing from the shuttle instead of just one, which he thought was odd.

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“As soon as we heard that they couldn’t pick [the shuttle] up on radar, I realized exactly what had happened,” he said.

The first television crew showed up on Wilson’s driveway about thirty minutes later. He was still in his jogging suit. By the time he called it a night around 8 p.m., he’d given nearly 40 interviews.

Investigations after the Columbia shuttle explosion revealed that a piece of foam broke free after liftoff and struck the shuttle’s left wing, damaging the shield designed to protect it from the heat of reentry. Chawla and six other astronauts — Rick Husband, Laurel Clark, Ilan Ramon, David Brown, William McCool and Michael Anderson — had spent 16 days conducting more than 80 experiments in space.

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After the Columbia accident, UTA named a new residence hall after Chawla. Several of Chawla’s crew members from her first launch attended the dorm’s groundbreaking ceremony, and Chawla’s father, Banarasi Lal Chawla, attended its dedication. “That was a real treat, to get to meet him,” Wilson said.

One of Chawla’s flight suits is in a display case inside Kalpana Chawla Hall, donated by her husband, Jean-Pierre Harrison. The two met a day after Chawla arrived in the U.S. to attend UTA.

Kalpana Chawla Hall, built in 2004, is a co-ed residence hall that hosts 419 students. A...
Kalpana Chawla Hall, built in 2004, is a co-ed residence hall that hosts 419 students. A remembrance wall inside the hall recounts Chawla's life story.(University of Texas at Arlington)

In 2010, UTA dedicated a memorial display to Chawla in Nedderman Hall, an engineering building on campus. The display includes photographs and biographical information about Chawla.

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Chawla inspires engineering students at UTA to this day. Wilson often hears from graduate students who come to UTA from India to study aerospace engineering because it’s where Chawla went to school.

Rimpy Singh is one such student. Fascinated by the sky since age 4, she remembers reading a newspaper article about Chawla as a young girl. Learning about Chawla’s path to becoming an astronaut empowered her to follow in her footsteps, and she is now a master’s student in aerospace engineering at UTA. Her undergraduate degree is in aeronautical engineering, just like Chawla.

“Kalpana Chawla means to me: a guiding path,” said Singh. “I was into the aerospace field and space, but I [did] not know where to go. But when I read her biography, I got to know, these [are] the steps which can lead me to my goal, [and] she has already done it.”

Wilson has several items from Chawla in his office at UTA, including a plaque that she gave him with photos from her first space mission. On the plaque, above a picture of the crew in their spacesuits, is an inscription in Chawla’s handwriting.

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“For Don & Pat Wilson — My adopted family — Thanks so much for every thing.”

Kalpana Chawla gave this plaque to her teacher and mentor, Don Wilson. The inscription in...
Kalpana Chawla gave this plaque to her teacher and mentor, Don Wilson. The inscription in Chawla's handwriting at the top reads: "For Don & Pat Wilson - My adopted family - Thanks so much for every thing."(Don Wilson)

Adithi Ramakrishnan is a science reporting fellow at The Dallas Morning News. Her fellowship is supported by the University of Texas at Dallas. The News makes all editorial decisions.