A Muse for Indian Women

Before Columbia’s Jan. 16 launch, Kalpana Chawla told a broadcast interviewer that she had been interested in space engineering since she was 14 or 15. She said she looked forward to the engineering work that she would do on this mission.

“I have lived my life for that, in some sense,” she said. Chawla, 41, known as KC to her neighbors and friends, was the first Indian-born woman in space and had become a local heroine in her hometown outside New Delhi. Indian newspapers carried her photo on their front pages Saturday, eagerly awaiting her return. Her parents, two sisters and a sister-in-law had traveled from India and were waiting at her home in Seabrook, Texas, eager to see Chawla upon her return, neighbors said.

“It’s just horrible, it’s tragic,” said Marie Inkofer, who lives next door. “There’s all this family in to greet her.”

Chawla was a strict vegetarian and a Deep Purple fan who took nearly two dozen CDs on the space mission, including ones by Abida Parveen, Yehudi Menuhin and Ravi Shankar. She went to her first rock concert, a Deep Purple show, in 2001 with her husband.

“Kalpana is not necessarily a rock music aficionado,” her husband wrote on a Web site. “But [she] nevertheless characterized the show as a ‘spiritual experience.’ ” She also was carrying a white silk banner on the mission as part of a worldwide campaign to honor teachers.

She had said she was inspired as a teenager to become a pilot. She thought she wanted to design aircraft, not enter the space program. When she did, however, she became a source of pride in her native land.

Chawla was born in rural Karnal, India, and received a bachelor of science degree in aeronautical engineering in India. She emigrated to the United States to attend the University of Texas at Arlington, where she earned a master’s degree in aerospace engineering in 1984. She met her future husband the first day, telling her brother in India that he shared her enthusiasm for flying.

She had two pilot licenses by the time she went on to the University of Colorado at Boulder, where she earned a doctorate in aerospace engineering in 1988. She joined NASA’s Ames Research Center in Northern California, worked at Overset Methods Inc. in Los Altos, Calif., then was selected by NASA to begin astronaut training in 1994.

During Chawla’s first flight into space in 1997, a solar satellite malfunctioned, leading to a five-month NASA investigation that blamed the flight crew and ground control for the error.

Two other astronauts had to go on a spacewalk to capture the wayward satellite. Chawla, who had been responsible for deploying it, said she had examined the mistakes and realized that “it’s time to really look at the future and not at the past.”

In India, the mood Saturday was “very depressed,” said Naresh Chandra, a former Indian ambassador to the U.S. Reached in New Delhi, he said that when the story broke, Indian networks immediately began broadcasting the news nonstop. Today will be a nationwide day of mourning, he said. “Kalpana was a source of inspiration for our students and for Indian women of all ages.”

The astronaut’s brother, Sanjay Chawla, 43, said from New Delhi: “To me, my sister is not dead. She is immortal. Isn’t that what a star is? She is a permanent star in the sky. She will always be up there where she belongs.”

Chawla was a member of the Sri Meenakshi Temple Society near Houston, attending when her schedule permitted, temple officials said. The temple will hold a traditional service today to pray for the peace of her soul and those of the other astronauts killed, said P. Ramalingam, administrator for the temple. “She was a nice lady ... and very pious,” Ramalingam said.