Reaching for the Stars Kalpana Chawla

 Reaching for the Stars

    Kalpana Chawla

                                  Reaching for the stars talks  about a rare individual named Kalpana Chawla, who is supposed to be India’s first women astronaut which itself is a rare feet. She was born and brought up in a very normal middle class family with two of a sisters and a brother. She personifies grit and determination because during her journey towards being Indian’s first women astronaut, she came across a lot many social barriers supported excellently by her parents. In spite of the fact that there was very low value attached to education for a girl child in the society.

                As usual there were lots of problems with regard to her family who were not convinced of sending her to Chandigarh for further studies, but later on she was successful in convincing her parents for the same.

                          Even at Punjab engineering collage she was persuaded not too apt for aeronautical engineering but the determined girl that she was. She never looked back at going for other specialization Punjab engineering collage helped her in building a strong foundation for her future studies.

                     She was very committed as an individual and by the end of her undergraduate course. She had already decided to the University of TEXAS as it had excellent teaching and research opportunities.  The same problem regard to her family came up and she solved it as usual and took a giant step towards excellence in the year 1982.Everybody at the university of Texas were amazed by her strong ambition and focus .She spent hours together at the library and at research led to equip herself for future.

                     Looking at her social life, we come to know that she got married in the year 1983 with a American. Her fearness with regard to this decision of her got the acceptance from her family and relatives .After getting through her master program, she enrolled herself for P.HD In mechanical engineering but later on shifted her topic to aerospace engineering as it was her passion and completed it in the year 1988.

              After her doctorate she joined NASA research center in California were in her work involved simulation of complex air- flows and applied for becoming an astronaut .At the NASA space center .Adding another further became the wise president and research scientist in the year 1993.She was also found dancing and enroll herself as a student Abina Dance Academy between the year 1992 and 1994.

                     Her passion finally got shape when she was selected for an interview medical evaluation by NASA from 2962 applicants as one of the 122 selected in Nov, 1997. She was finally selected to go into space as one of the six crew members on broad the Columbia shuttle’s STS- 87 mission .AS a mission specialist. It is said that she never forget her first sight of the earth from the shuttle .She was later on  appointed as crew representative for the STS-107 again aboard the Columbia space shuttle on the a 16 day mission in order to research  micro-gravity.

                                 It was a perfect launch and every crew member worked according to plan but on the 1th Feb 2003 when the space shuttle was ready to reenter the earth atmosphere, all the communication suddenly snapped and after sometime the shuttle broke into a series of white spots accompanied by a loud sound. It was a together beyond imagination as there were no survivors at all.

                           A sad end to a remarkable life of truly brilliant women Kalpana Chawla .She will always be remembered for her amazing ability and more importantly faith in it. Through her extra ordinary will power. She was able to reach where she did.

                                                  Thank you