Incredible honour! US aerospace company to name next spacecraft after Kalpana Chawla

US-based aerospace and defence company Northrop Grumman is naming its next spacecraft after Kalpana Chawla -- the first woman of Indian-origin to travel to space. The SS Kalpana Chawla would be the company's next Cygnus spacecraft that would make its way to the International Space Station (ISS).

"It is the company's tradition to name each Cygnus after an individual who has played a pivotal role in human spaceflight," Northrop Grumman said in a statement.

The SS Kalpana Chawla is tentatively scheduled to launch from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Wallop Flight Facility on September 29. It will deliver 3,639 kilos of cargo to the ISS.

This is not the first honour in Kalpana Chawla's name. Shortly after her death, India's former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee renamed the MetSat-1 to Kalpana-1 in her honour. NASA had also named a supercomputer after Chawla. On Mars, seven peaks in the Columbia Hills chain are named after the astronauts who perished in the Columbia disaster.

Born and brought up in Karnal, Kalpana Chawla moved to the US after completing her degree in aeronautical engineering from Punjab Engineering College in 1982. She completed her master's degree in aerospace engineering from the US and continued with her PhD. She joined NASA in 1988 but left for a while before joining as an astronaut candidate in 1994.

During her second stint in space, Kalpana Chawla and her six crew members perished as the STS-107 reentered Earth's atmosphere on February 1, 2003.

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