Kalpana Chawla| Mystery Of NASA Columbia Space Disaster
On 1st February, 2003, NASA’s Columbia Space Shuttle was returning to Earth. 7 astronauts were seated in this shuttle, one of whom was very special for India. Mission Specialist Kalpana Chawla. these astronauts were returning to Earth after spending 2 weeks in space. Their families and friends were waiting for them with bated breath. This flight was special for all of them. But for NASA, it was a routine flight. Because this was the 28th flight of the space Mission Columbia program. At 08:44 AM, the space shuttle re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere. The system were working as expected and everything seemed normal.
On the Earth, in the Space Center, was the Capsule Communicator CAPCOM Charlie Hobaugh. He was the person communicating with the space shuttle. After a few minute, Charlie Hobough talked to the astronauts in the space shuttle about the readings of tire pressure. On the other hand, Mission Commander Rick Husband was answering that suddenly the line gets cut. They only hear one word from him. “Roger.” His answer remained unfinished. Ten minutes passed. The attempts continued, but there was still no answer from the other side. This NASA team in the space center was unaware that there was an explosion in the Columbia Space Shuttle.
A few minutes later, the Kennedy Space Center gets a call. “Switch on the TV and watch the news.” Such scenes were seen on the news. Some people looked up at the sky and this is what they could see. As if a comet was falling to the ground. A blazing light. It broke apart into two, and broke into more pieces. At 9:12 AM in Texas, the pieces of this spaceship were falling from the sky. By then, NASA had realized that something disastrous had happened.
A few hours later, President Geogre Bush addressed the country. My fellow Americans, this day has brought terrible news and great sadness to our country, the Columbia is lost. There are no survivors. All seven astronauts were killed and one of them was a 40-years old Indian-born American, Kalpana Chawla. A women whose story became an inspiration for the whole country.
Kalpana Chawla was born on 17th March 1962 in Karnal, Haryana in a conservative family. Her parents Banarasilal Chawla and Sanjyoti Chawla came ti India from Pakistan during the partition. Kalpana was their fourth and youngest child. Her struggles with society began since her childhood. Sanjay says that she was a very determined girl. Kalpana Chawla was interested in space after seeing planes flying in the sky. In 1991, she became an American citizen. And in 1994, NASA selected 20 out of 4,000 applicants for astronaut training. One of the whom was Kalpana Chawla. After 3 years of training, in November 1997. Kalpana went on her first flight into space.
The Columbia program flight STS-87. In this space shuttle, she orbits the Earth more than 250 times. She stayed in space for 2 weeks. STS’s full form was Space Transportation System. This was the official name of NASA’s space shuttle program. This was the 4th program that had human-space flights. The first was Project Mercury, Project Gemini, and the most famous Apollo program, and then this program, which started in 1981. This was the longest human space flight program in history, which ran till 2011. Here, NASA’s focus was on re-usability. To launch the same space shuttle again and again. So that there was no need to build new space shuttles every time. There were two main space shuttles used in this program. The first was the Challenger and the second was the Columbia Space Shuttle. After the Columbia disaster, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavor space shuttles were also used. You can find these in museums today. Among all of them, the Columbia was the first space shuttle to go into space in April 1981. It had completed 27 successful missions before the disaster. That everything was not going as it should be.
Columbia’s backup flight software showed some messages on the display to let them know that four wheels on the left side of the space shuttle has lost pressure. And this warning came exactly one minute before the time when Columbia lost the signal to the Earth. The CAPCOM on the ground was trying to communicate about this. The astronauts had no information about this but some people in NASA knew about this problem. Not just a couple of hours before the accident but 16 days before. They knew this when the shuttle was launched. The thing is that after 81 seconds of Columbia’s launch a small piece of foam separated from the shuttle and collided with the left wing. This foam was used to connect Columbia’s external tank to the main shuttle. It was not a big piece. It was only 60 cm long and 40 cm wide. It weighed only 750 grams. But it hit the left wing so much velocity that the velocity is estimated to have been between 700-900 km per hour. 2-3 days after this incident, some NASA engineers asked STS Program Manager Ron D. Dittemore to take pictures to examine the damage that was caused to the space shuttle.
They could have used their American spy satellites. But the engineers said that the Chief refused this request. This is why when this was later found out after the incident, in April 2003, he resigned from his position. Acknowledging his mistake. When the Columbia Space Shuttle was disintegrating violently, they did not have to suffer any heat or damage. This report tried to reconstruct the crew’s last minute. Warning signs and alerts were ringing all around. There were problems with tire pressure and landing gear. This report also stated that even if the cabin had better equipment, the astronauts could not have been saved. “The breakup of the crew module and the crew’s subsequent exposure to hypersonic entry conditions was not survivable by any currently existing capability.”
After this incident, NASA stopped this space shuttle program for 2.5 years. And most importantly, the design of the foam ramp was also changed. The design was changed so that an incident like this would not happen again. And thankfully, till now, even 20 years later, such as incident was not repeated. The space shutter program was continued until the International Space Station was functional. In July 2011, when it was finally wrapped up, 135 missions were carried out under this program and it had run for 30 years. In these 30 years, 14 astronauts lost their lives in unfortunate accidents. And one of them was Kalpana Chawla. India lost its pride. But Kalpana Chawla’s impact is seen in the lives of millions, directly or indirectly. NASA paid tributes to Kalpana Chawla and other crew members in the last few years. Like NASA’s landing on Mars, that place was called Columbia Memorial Station. And there are many asteroids between Mars and Jupiter that were named after these crew members. This is why, today, somewhere far away in our solar system as asteroid is orbiting the Sun, whose name is 51826 Kalpana Chawla.