Kalpana Chawla born on March 17, 1962 was an Indian American astronaut and the first woman of Indian origin in space. She first flew on Space Shuttle Columbia in 1997 as a mission specialist and primary robotic arm operator.
In 2003, Chawla was one of the seven crew members killed in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster.
In 1988, she began working , where she did Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) research on Vertical/Short Takeoff and Landingconcepts.
In 1993, she joined Overset Methods, Inc. as Vice President and Research Scientist specializing in simulation of moving multiple body problems. She traveled 10.67 million km, as many as 252 times around the Earth.
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