Kalpana Chawla: Mystery of NASA Columbia Space Disaster | Explained by Dhruv Rathee

Kalpana Chawla: Mystery of NASA Columbia Space Disaster

Hello, friends! 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 systems were working as expected and everything seemed normal. On the Earth, in the Space Centre, was the Capsule Communicator CAPCOM Charlie Hobaugh. He was the person communicating with the space shuttle. After a few minutes, Charlie Hobock talked to the astronauts in the space shuttle about the readings of tire pressure. "And Columbia, Houston, we see your tire pressure messages-and we did not copy your last.-Is it instrumentation, MMACS?" 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."-those are also off, off-scale. -And Houston, roger, bu... "Charlie Hobaugh tries to establish communication again, but there was no answer from the other side. Ten minutes pass.

The attempts continued, but there was still no answer from the other side. "HOBAUGH: Columbia, Houston, UHF comm check. This NASA team in the Space Centre was unaware that there was an explosion in the Columbia Space Shuttle. a few minutes later, the Kennedy Space Centre gets a call." Switch on the TV and watch the news. Such scenes were seen on the news. They've lost contact. We can only hope that what we're seeing is not the worst. "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. The scattered pieces of this blazing light, were falling to the ground. 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.

Images of CAPCOM Charlie Hobaugh

A few hours later, President George 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-year-old Indian-born American, Kalpana Chawla. A woman whose story became an inspiration for the whole country. Let's know her story in this article.

Kalpana Chawla biography:

Kalpana Chawla was born on 17th March 1962in Karnal, Haryana in a conservative family. Her parents Banarasilal Chawla and Sanjyoti Chawla came to India from Pakistan during the partition. Kalpana was their fourth and youngest child When she started going to school, she was not formally named. At home, everyone called her Montu. When her elder sister took her to school, they asked her name, we said that we hadn't named her yet. At home, everyone called her by her nickname Montu. So, when the need arose, she chose her name herself. Kalpana, which means imagination. At that time, no one would have imagined that this young child would go on to do amazing feats in her life. Her brother Sanjay Chawla says that her struggles with society began since her childhood. I will show these boys, I am not a silly girl. Sanjay says that she was a very determined girl. Imagine the 1960s, in Haryana, even today, a male child is preferred in many places. What would have happened in those days? Kalpana Chawla was interested in space after seeing planes flying in the sky.

kalpana chawla childhood photos

In her childhood, she used to go to the local flying club with her father. Her parents started noticing her interest. But when she grew up, her father and her professors and teachers advised her not to pursue this profession. There was nothing for girls in this career path. Sanjay Chawla says that it was a big shock for everyone. Everyone tried to discourage her, asking her not to do it. But no one could stop Kalpana. From Punjab Engineering College, she completed her Bachelor's degree in Aeronautical Engineering. And then she went to America to complete her Master's degree at University of Texas. Even though her father was disapproving of her decision to go abroad to study. Because I lived in India, in a very small town, and, um, forget about space, I didn't even know if my folks were going to let me go to the engineering college Later in 1988, she did her PhD in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Colorado.

images: University of Colorado

She was 26 years old at the time when she started working at NASA's Ames Research Centre. Her specialization was Fluid Dynamics Aircraft. That is, studying how the air flows like fluid around an aircraft's wings and all around. she had several pilot licenses. She knew how to fly airplanes, gliders, and seaplanes. In 1991, she became an American citizen. And in 1994, NASA selected 20 out of 4,000 applicants for astronaut training. One of 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, then Project Gemini, and then 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. Now you might be thinking, was it safe to use a shuttle so many times? Was this the reason behind this disaster? The answer is No. The STS program was designed specifically for reusability. After every flight, there was a long process of inspecting, repairing, and refurbishing the shuttles. The actual reason behind the Columbia disaster was a minor reason. We will discuss this later in the video. But as a concept, there was nothing wrong with the STS program. The 24th flight of the Columbia Space Shuttle was Kalpana Chawla's first space flight.STS-87In it, she was the Mission Specialist. She was the main operator of the robotic arm of the flight.

beautiful images of kalpana chawla

Her job was to operate a robot arm in this flight that would deploy the Spartan satellite. A satellite that would be sent to study the outer layer of the sun. But during this mission, something happens that shakes her confidence. This 1,360 kg satellite goes out of control and she was unable to retrieve it. After 3 days and a spacewalk the satellite had to be brought back. But later, NASA scientists congratulated her and praised her. She told the University of Texas magazine, K.C. you did a great job. Many senior astronauts had told her this. It turned out that it wasn't her fault but someone else's in the shuttle crew. Because of this successful mission, Kalpana became the first Indian-origin woman to go to space and the first South Asian-American woman.

The then Indian Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujralhad congratulated her. Yes, Mr Gujral, I hear you loud and clear. how do you read me? Kalpana, we are proud of you. Each one of us. You have done such pioneering work. Thank you, sir, thank you very much. And how Kalpana was feeling when she went to space for the first time? She had this to say. "When you look at the stars and galaxy, you feel that you are not just from any particular piece of land, but from the solar system. That is, before a city, a country or a continent, we humans belong to the Earth and the solar system as a whole. This flight lasted for 16 days and ran many other scientific experiments too. Like, it was observed how plant reproduction works in microgravity. But more interesting were the experiments that were done on her second and last flight before the crash.16th January 2003, 10.29 AM, Columbia Space Shuttle leaves the Earth for the last time. This mission was originally planned for 2001and it was delayed 13 times. Finally, in 2003, it was launched from Kennedy Space Centre. Mission STS-107 had 7 astronauts in total, led by Commander Rick Husband. The Payload Commander was Michael Anderson and three Mission Specialist sone of whom was Kalpana Chawla.

The Pilots were William McCooland from the Israel Space Agency, was Ilan Ramon, who was a Payload Specialist. The mission of these astronauts was to conduct non-stop experiments for 24 hours. Non-stop didn't mean without sleeping. It meant working in shifts, obviously. For 16 days, when they were in space, they carried out around 80 experiments in life sciences, material science, and fluid physics. Kalpana Chawla was focusing on microgravity. How combustion happens in space. How fire can be suppressed. How crystal growth happens. And even how prostate cancer grows in space. Without going into too much detail, this was quite interesting because when cells grow in laboratories on Earth, they grow in two-dimensional mono-layers in culture dishes. But in space, cells grow in three dimensions in the shape of spheroids. Similarly, cancer tumours are formed in our bodies. This helped us understand tumour behaviour. In this mission, a company called Spacehab collaborated with NASA with the help of which, universities, companies, and government agencies all over the world, could conduct their research in space without going to space. them selves It meant that these astronauts were doing experiments on their behalf. In fact, children from 6 schools in Australia, China, Israel, Japan, the USA, were chosen who wanted to have these astronauts run their experiments. spiders, silkworms, organic crystals, fishes, bees, ants, how do they react in space?

Children wanted to know these so experiments were being conducted on it. An interesting thing about flowers was discovered in these experiments the smell of these flowers on the Earth changes in space. Because even during the mission, the data was constantly being transmitted to Earth approximately 30% of the data from these experiments was saved, collected, and kept in the ground stations. Some videos of the successful experiments were recorded which were then sent back to the children like the ones about ants and crystals. However, there were more than 40 experiments from which we were not able to retrieve any data due to this incident.

In a remarkable turn of events, a group of roundworms managed to survive a catastrophic space shuttle disaster with only minor heat damage. These resilient roundworms were housed in aluminum canisters on the ill-fated spacecraft. Following the tragedy, the wreckage of the spaceship was recovered, and among the debris were five to six cans containing Petri dishes with living roundworms.

Fast forward to the second-to-last mission of NASA's STS program, the Space Shuttle Endeavour in 2011, and some descendants of these surviving roundworms were aboard the mission. But the question that looms large is: what caused this disaster? Was it due to a pilot error or hasty decisions by the crew? Surprisingly, it was none of these. None of the seven astronauts aboard the Columbia made any mistakes, and up until a mere 3-4 minutes before the accident, they had no inkling of what was about to transpire.

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At 8:58 AM, just a minute before losing contact with Earth, an indication appeared on the shuttle's display. It signalled trouble with the left side of the space shuttle, specifically a loss of pressure in the four wheels. The ground's CAPCOM tried to communicate this information, but here's the shocker: NASA knew about this problem not a couple of hours before the accident but a staggering 16 days prior, dating back to the shuttle's launch.

The root cause was a small piece of foam, measuring 60 cm by 40 cm and weighing only 750 grams, that broke away from the shuttle's external tank and struck the left wing with astonishing velocity, estimated between 700-900 km per hour. Just days after this incident, NASA engineers requested photos to assess the damage, but their request was denied. It wasn't until after the accident in April 2003 that the engineer who denied the request resigned, acknowledging his mistake.

An internal commission named the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) delved into the incident and released a comprehensive report in August 2003. This report pointed fingers at NASA's negligence and the failure to use spy satellites to monitor the damage. As a result, the mission proceeded as planned for 15 more days, during which the damage on the left wing expanded.

As the shuttle re-entered Earth's atmosphere, the damage worsened, leading to a small hole that allowed air to escape. This loss of cabin pressure led to the astronauts' swift demise. The shuttle disintegrated, and despite the report's findings, even with better equipment, it was concluded that the astronauts could not have been saved.

Following this disaster, NASA halted the space shuttle program for 2.5 years and made vital design changes to prevent a recurrence. Thankfully, in the 20 years since, such an incident has not recurred. The space shuttle program continued until July 2011 when it concluded with 135 missions spanning 30 years. Over these three decades, 14 astronauts tragically lost their lives, including India's pride, Kalpana Chawla.

Kalpana Chawla's legacy lives on in the countless lives she has influenced through her passion for science education. She paved the way for Indian students to participate in NASA's programs, fostering dreams of space exploration. In her memory, NASA named a location on Mars the "Columbia Memorial Station," and several asteroids between Mars and Jupiter bear the names of the Columbia crew members. One of these asteroids, 51826 Kalpana Chawla, orbits our sun, ensuring that her memory endures far beyond our world.