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Kalpana Chawla (March 17, 1962 – February 1, 2003) was an American astronaut, engineer, and the first woman of Indian descent to go to 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 who died in the Space Shuttle Columbiadisaster when the spacecraft disintegrated during its re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere. Chawla was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, and several streets, universities and institutions have been named in her honor. In 2018, the International Space University(ISU) established the Kalpana Chawla Project for Innovation, Entrepreneurism, and Space Studies in remembrance of the late astronaut. This program aims to provide scholarships to Indian women in order to develop their "technical and leadership qualities."

Chawla was born on March 17, 1962, in Karnal, India, but her official date of birth was altered to July 1, 1961, to allow her to become eligible for the matriculation exam. As a child, Kalpana liked to draw pictures of airplanes. She went to local flying clubs and watched planes with her father. "Every once in a while we'd ask my dad if we could get a ride in one of these planes. And, he did take us to the flying club and get us a ride in the Pushpak and a glider that the flying club had."

In 1976, Chawla graduated from the Tagore School, where she was a high-performing student. After getting a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Aeronautical Engineering from Punjab Engineering College, India, she moved to the United States in 1982 and obtained a Master of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington in 1984. Chawla went on to earn a second Masters in 1986, and a PhD in aerospace engineering in 1988 from the University of Colorado Boulder.

Much of Chawla's research is included in technical journals and conference papers.

Chawla is survived by her husband of almost 20 years before her death, Jean‐Pierre Harrison, as well as the couple's son.

After Astronaut Candidate training, Chawla worked on extravehicular activity (EVA), as well as robotics and computer issues.

In the late 1990s, and early 2000s, the issue of defense against cruise missiles became more prominent with the new Bush Administration. In 2002, President George W. Bush withdrew the US from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, allowing further development and testing of ABMs under the Missile Defense Agency, as well as deployment of interceptor vehicles beyond the single site allowed under the treaty. The US subsequently employed the national missile defense (NMD) system.

In 1988, she began working at NASA Ames Research Center, where she did computational fluid dynamics(CFD) research on vertical and/or short take-off and landing(V/STOL) concepts.

Due in largest part from the ingestion of contaminated dairy products along with the inhalation of the short-lived and therefore highly radioactive isotope, Iodine-131, the 2005 UN collaborative Chernobyl Forumrevealed thyroid cancer among children to be one of the main health impacts from the Chernobyl accident.

In 2004 the UN collaborative Chernobyl Forum revealed thyroid cancer among children to be one of the main health impacts from the Chernobyl accident. This is due to the ingestion of contaminated dairy products, along with the inhalation of the short-lived, highly radioactive isotope, Iodine-131.

The Chernobyl disaster, also referred to as the Chernobyl accident, was a catastrophic nuclear accident that occurred on 25–26 April 1986 in the No. 4 nuclear reactor at the V. I. Lenin Nuclear Power Plant, also known as the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, near the now-abandoned town of Pripyat, in northern Soviet Ukraine.

Evacuation began long before the accident was publicly acknowledged by the Soviet Union. In the morning of 28 April, radiation levels set off alarms at the Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant in Sweden, over 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) from the Chernobyl Plant. Workers at Forsmark reported the case to the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority, which determined that the radiation had originated elsewhere. That day, the Swedish government contacted the Soviet government to inquire about whether there had been a nuclear accident in the Soviet Union. The Soviet government initially denied it, and it was only after the Swedish government suggested they were about to file an official alert with the IAEA, that the Soviet government admitted an accident took place at Chernobyl. At first, the Soviets only conceded that a minor accident had occurred, but once they began evacuating over 100,000 people, the full-scale of the situation was realized by the global community.

During the dry seasons, a perennial concern is forests that have been contaminated by radioactive material catching on fire. Depending on the prevailing atmospheric conditions, the fires could potentially spread the radioactive material further outwards from the exclusion zone in the smoke. In Belarus, the Bellesrad organization is tasked with overseeing the food cultivation and forestry management in the area.

During the dry seasons, a perennial concern is forests that have been contaminated by radioactive material catching on fire. The dry conditions and build-up of debris make the forests are a ripe breeding ground for wildfires. Depending on the prevailing atmospheric conditions, the fires could potentially spread the radioactive material further outwards from the exclusion zone in the smoke. In Belarus, the Bellesrad organization is tasked with overseeing the food cultivation and forestry management in the area.

The accident occurred during a late-night safety test which simulated a station blackout power-failure, in the course of which both emergency safety and power-regulating systems were intentionally turned off. A combination of inherent reactor design flaws and the reactor operators arranging the core in a manner contrary to the checklist for the test, eventually resulted in uncontrolled reaction conditions. Water flashed into steam generating a destructive steam explosion and a subsequent open-air graphite fire.This fire produced considerable updrafts for about nine days. The heat was so intense that it melted firefighters' boots. The fire was finally contained on 4 May 1986. The lofted plumes of fission products released into the atmosphere by the fire precipitated onto western Europe and parts of the USSR. The estimated radioactive inventory that was released during this very hot fire phase approximately equaled in magnitude the airborne fission products released in the initial destructive explosion.