IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - December 2007 - 44

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PHOTO COURTESY OF NASA

During her
time at NASA,
Chawla
worked on the
development
of Robotic
Situational
Awareness
Displays and
tested space
shuttle control
software.

PHOTO COURTESY OF NASA

astronaut office EVA/Robotics and computer branches. Her assignments included work on development of Robotic
Situational Awareness Displays and testing space shuttle control software in the
Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory.
It was in November 1996 that
Chawla was assigned as mission specialist and prime robotic arm operator on
STS-87. She was the first Indian-born
woman and the second person of Indian
origin to fly in space following cosmonaut Rakesh Sharma in 1984. STS-87
focused on experiments designed to
study how the weightless environment
of space affects various physical processes and to observe the sun's outer atmospheric layers. She logged more than 375
hours in space and approximately 252
orbits of the earth.
In 1998, she was assigned as crew
representative for shuttle and station
flight crew equipment. Subsequently
she was assigned as the lead for the
astronaut office's crew systems and habitability section until, in 2000, she was
selected for her second flight as part of

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the crew of STS-107. On
16 January 2003 she went
into space as a mission
specialist aboard Columbia
on the ill-fated STS-107.

The Journey Matters

Throughout Chawla's determination to achieve her
dreams, her indomitable
spirit stands out. While
growing up in India she
often slept in the courtyard
and gazed at the stars. Her
strong will to reach for those
stars convinced her parents
to let her go to the United
States for higher studies.
Today, girls have more choices than
Chawla's generation and yet the pressure
from family and society to conform
remains. The moment you begin
approaching the age where you must
choose subjects in college there is pressure. "Do home science and learn to be a
good wife" or "Do commerce and join
the family business" or "Do medicine and
join the family business."
Parents try to coax their children to
make a so-called "safe" career choice or,
if you have supportive parents, your conservative relatives try to dictate your life's
decisions. They would rather see you
married and settled down. In such families, only the gutsy manage to stick to
the course they have chosen for themselves. The majority of young adults quietly fall in line.
This is the reason why Chawla's story
has inspired many young girls, not just
those who have chosen a similar field of
study, but those who never aspired to be
an astronaut or fly a plane. Through her
example she has succeeded in igniting
an extraordinary desire and
confidence in many young
Chawla
was
women, most of whom she
among
had never met, to fulfill their
the crew
dreams. For a multitude of
members
that
Indians fed on a diet of
perished
anorexic beauty queens who
on the illmouth well-worn platitudes,
fated
space
we are starved for a role
shuttle
model. We are thirsty for peoColumbia.
ple we can aspire to be like.

WINTER 2007/2008

Chawla was not one of the dollarobsessed techies of this age. In one of her
interviews, when asked for a message for
Indian children she said, "Material interests are not the only guiding light. It is
something you'd enjoy doing in the long
run. Take time to figure out how to get
there. The quickest way may not necessarily be the best. The journey matters as
much as the goal."
Quoting philosopher Seneca, Chawla
always said, "I was not born for one corner; the whole world is my native land."
We may have lost her to the stars but she
leaves behind her a legacy that most certainly will motivate others like her to follow their dreams.
As they say "A candle that burns twice
as bright, burns half as long."
-Chaitri Aroskar

WIE Make a Difference
Support and advice
for the next generation

Getting to the crux of what's real in
today's society is more than a little
tricky. MTV annually rolls out The Real
World, a show where the cast is carefully
handpicked to create conflict. In sports,
boxing's Evander "The Real Deal" Holyfield is 20 years past his prime and regularly defeated. As for the real truth, it's an
inconvenient one if you're Al Gore and
there's variations of it for Dick Cheney.

Panetta passing on her
real world experiences
Fortunately, IEEE WIE Committee Chair
Karen Panetta's version of "keeping it real"
is more effective. It's all about
taking her real world
experience and passing
it on to other engineers and students.
Panetta serves as
the associate professor
Karen
of electrical and comPanetta
puter engineering and
director of the Simulation Research Laboratory at Tufts University in Medford,

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - December 2007