India mourns space heroine

NEW DELHI, India -- Front pages of Saturday's Indian newspapers carried pictures of Kalpana Chawla, the first Indian-born woman in space, to celebrate her expected return to earth on the U.S. space shuttle Columbia.

But the return never happened, as the shuttle broke apart more than 200,000 feet above central Texas minutes before it was to land in Florida, killing all seven crew members.

Instead of a celebration, a pall of sadness descended on India as much of the country watched with horror the video footage showing the disintegration of the space shuttle Columbia.

In a letter to U.S. President George W. Bush, Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee conveyed his sympathies to the American people. "We mourn with you in this moment of grief. Our hearts go out to the bright young men and women who were on that spacecraft. For us in India, we felt that since one of them was an Indian-born woman it adds a special poignancy to the tragedy."

"The world has seen with admiration the U.S. spacecraft program. We hope that in the days to come it will reach new heights," Vajpayee added.

Hometown heroine

In Chawla's hometown of Karnal, 75 miles northwest of the capital, New Delhi, a gathering at her high school which had been planned to celebrate the successful end of Columbia's mission turned into a prayer vigil as news of the accident was reported.

Karnal residents and hundreds of millions of Indians had been elated at Chawla. The 40-year-old became the first Indian woman to enter space in 1997, when she was part of the Columbia mission that orbited the earth.

Though deeply saddened, Chawla's brother, Sanjay, tried to be philosophical about her death.
"When you're involved in such a profession, you need to be ready for this kind of news," he told CNN's Satinder Bindra. "I was just telling my friends that if you're in the army or air force or any such field, you should be ready to receive such news."

"When this can happen to others, it can also happen to you. This time, such a tragedy has befallen our family, but our relatives and friends and the people of Karnal are all sharing our grief," the brother added.

'Mind boggling'

In India, which has launched satellites for years and is preparing for a moon orbit this decade, Chawla was a new kind of heroine.

Born in Karnal, Chawla earned a degree in engineering from Punjab Engineering College in 1982 and then went to the United States, where she earned her Master's and doctorate in aerospace engineering.

She joined NASA in 1995 as an astronaut candidate.

Prior to her departure on Columbia for what was her second trip to space, she told reporters that her inspiration to take up flying was J.R.D. Tata, who flew the first mail flights in India.
She told the Press Trust of India on January 16: "What J.R.D. Tata had done during those years was very intriguing and definitely captivated my imagination."

Following her first space flight, in 1997, she had told News India-Times of seeing India's Himalayan Mountains.

"The Ganges Valley looked majestic, mind boggling," she said.

"Africa looked like a desert and the Nile a vein in it."

Chawla said that as the shuttle repeatedly passed over India, especially New Delhi, she pointed it out to the other crew members and said, "I lived near there."

She became an astronaut in 1994. On her first space flight, she was blamed for making mistakes that sent a science satellite tumbling out of control. Other astronauts went on a space walk to capture it.

India Today magazine reported that NASA had absolved Chawla, rating her a "terrific astronaut," and saying the accident had resulted from a series of small errors.