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SPEAKER_03: Hello, from Wonder Media Network, I'm Jenny Kaplan,
SPEAKER_02: and this is Womanica. This month we're talking about adventurers, women who refuse to be confined. They push the boundaries of where a woman could go and how she could get there. Today we're talking about an astronaut who made a name for herself among the stars and even has an asteroid named after her. Though her life was cut short, her legacy as the first Indian-born woman to reach out to her family lives on. Let's talk about Kalpana Chawla. Kalpana floated hundreds of miles above her home in Houston, Texas. It was November of 1997, and she was on her first trip to outer space. As her NASA shuttle orbited Earth, Kalpana took in a view that only a select few have ever enjoyed. She said, when you look at the stars in the galaxy, you feel like you're in the middle of a galaxy. You feel that you're not just from any particular piece of land, but from the solar system. Kalpana was born in Karnal, India on March 17th, 1962. For the first several years of her life, she didn't have a formal name. Her parents and three older siblings usually called her a mantu. It wasn't until she started school that she selected a name for herself. Kalpana meaning idea or imagination. Her choice of name was fitting. From an early age, Kalpana envisioned a future for herself that seemed outside the limits of possibility. She was fascinated by airplanes and spent many days visiting the local flying club with her father. She dreamed of one day taking to the skies. Though, as she said, forget about space, I didn't even know if my folks would let me go to the engineering college. They did, and Kalpana graduated from Punjab Engineering College with a degree in aeronautical engineering. She was the first woman to ever graduate from the program. Kalpana was determined to be an astronaut, but there weren't many opportunities in India. So, she immigrated to the United States. She got her master's degree from the University of Texas. She then earned a doctorate in aerospace engineering from the University of Colorado. Kalpana also remained committed to the exhilarating experience of flight, picking up a commercial pilot's license and a certified flight instructor's license. In 1988, she started working at NASA's Ames Research Center in California. There, she studied how air flows around an aircraft during flight. By the 1990s, she'd become a naturalized US citizen. And in 1994, NASA selected Kalpana as an astronaut candidate. She was one of only 20 trainees accepted out of a pool of roughly 4,000 applicants. And thus began a year of intense training and preparing for space flight. All while she also worked on testing and developing software for robotic arms. Man, 60 seconds.
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SPEAKER_02: Kalpana was 35 years old when she embarked on her first mission to space in November of 1997. She and five other astronauts lived and worked in the space shuttle Columbia for two weeks. They studied plants and different materials in microgravity. And Kalpana had a special role, operating the robotic arm. It wasn't an easy task. Kalpana used the robotic arm to deploy a new satellite. But because of a malfunction, it drifted away and she couldn't recapture it with the arm. Two other crew members had to retrieve it on a spacewalk a few days later. The Columbia shuttle orbited Earth 252 times. Kalpana marveled at the strange beauty of floating so high above Earth. Here's how she described it. It's a dome of dark sky and stars everywhere. And the Earth, a lot of the time, is covered with thunderstorms here and there with small sprays of lightning. And every once in a while, city lights peep through the clouds. It's very much like a storybook. That first mission made Kalpana a national hero in her home country of India. When she made it back to Earth, she worked to ensure that other Indian girls felt empowered to follow dreams of space exploration too. NASA invited the Indian Secondary School, where she got her start, to participate in the Summer Space Experience Program. Each year, two girls traveled from India to Houston. Kalpana always welcomed the girls from her home near the Space Center to share dinner with her and her husband. In the year 2000, Kalpana was selected for a second voyage into space. After several delays, the mission finally launched on January 16, 2003. Kalpana's second trip on the space shuttle Columbia lasted 16 days. The crew worked around the clock in alternating 12-hour shifts to conduct more than 80 experiments during the mission. They tested technology designed to recycle water on the International Space Station. They performed research for new drugs. And they ran experiments designed by elementary school students from around the world to study how insects and fish respond to the weightless environment of space. On the morning of February 1, 2003, Kalpana and six other astronauts onboard the shuttle prepared to return home. They planned to land the aircraft back at the Kennedy Space Center. But as the shuttle re-entered Earth's atmosphere, something malfunctioned and communication was completely lost. A chunk of insulation had broken off during launch and damaged the shield that protects the craft from extreme heat. Hot gas streamed into the left wing. The ship bucked and rolled through the air. In less than a minute, the shuttle completely depressurized, bursting apart above Texas and Louisiana. All seven members of the crew were killed in the explosion. After her death, Kalpana's name took on a life of its own. Shortly after the shuttle's explosion, NASA named seven asteroids orbiting the sun between Mars and Jupiter after the astronauts, and later, seven hills on the surface of Mars. In 2010, the University of Texas dedicated a memorial to Kalpana at the Arlington College of Engineering. She was also posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, the NASA Space Flight Medal, and the NASA Distinguished Service Medal. Kalpana's widowed husband, Jean-Pierre, published a biography about her life and accomplishments called The Edge of Time in 2011. Today, Kalpana is remembered for the unexpected way her life and career were cut short, but she also remains an inspiration to many young aspiring scientists, especially young women, for her pioneering achievements at NASA. As Kalpana said, "'If you have a dream, follow it. "'It doesn't really matter whether you are a woman "'or from India or from wherever. "'Nothing is impossible for women "'if they have a strong will.'" All month, we're talking about adventurers. For more information, find us on Facebook and Instagram at Womanaka Podcast. Special thanks to Liz Kaplan, my favorite sister and co-creator. Talk to you tomorrow.
SPEAKER_07: Evidence-wise, we had virtually no evidence.
SPEAKER_03: In 1995, Detective Tony Richardson was trying to figure out who killed a fellow officer. The case comes down to who is believed and who is ignored. Oh my goodness, we did convict an innocent man. I'm Beth Shelburne from Lava for Good Podcasts. This is Ear Witness. Listen to Ear Witness on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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