after all that abt kalpana .. we shld talk about the pioneer in indianauts...rakesh sharma

Rakesh Sharma was a cosmonaut who was born on January 13, 1949, in India. Before he became a cosmonaut, Sharma was a test pilot.

Sharma became a cosmonaut in 1982. He became the first citizen of India to go into space when he flew aboard Soyuz T-11 in 1984. The crew spent seven days on the Salyut space station.

last i heard him quoting this

The Columbia shuttle disaster, in which Indian American Kalpana Chawla and six of her colleagues perished, has not deterred Wing Commander (retd) Rakesh Sharma, India's first man in space.

"I am quite willing to go into space again, in a space shuttle or a capsule... I do not mind who takes me either," says Sharma, who test-flew planes for the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited and retired two years ago.

It was in April 1984 that Sharma went into space on the Soyuz T-11 with the Russians. He was trained for one-and-a-half years for the eight-day trip.

What every Indian probably remembers best about that legendary voyage are the words that Sharma used to describe India to a waiting prime minister Indira Gandhi. "Jaise saare jahan se achcha," he said, immortalising himself in the hearts of all Indians who heard him on tape over the following years.

The one thing that cosmonauts are trained most to cope with is zero gravity. For example, Sharma, who recently gave a lecture in Bangalore on the kind of training that is given to astronauts, recalled that they were all made to sleep with their heads lower than their feet.

Sharma says that six months before the launch, he dropped the fitness regime that the other cosmonauts were following and did intensive yoga. This was to assess whether yoga helps people cope better with the lack of gravity.

He says he had no time to be exited or worried in space. "There was so much hectic activity on board the spaceship, so many things that each of us had to do, that we literally had no time to sit around and stare into space..."

He says that the worst moment of his trip was when the Soyuz T-11, a single-use spaceship in which the procedure for landing was different, caught fire.

"The space capsule burnt when it re-entered the earth's atmosphere. As the layers of atmosphere became denser, the surface friction became high and the spaceship began to burn off in layers. I can still recall... it was all so noisy."

As this was going on, Sharma and his fellow astronauts parachuted.

"It was quite frightening to bail out of a burning spaceship. We had to parachute out over the desert of Kazakhstan."

that brings me to kalpana chawala..
remrkably indian




Kalpana Chawla, 41, was an aerospace engineer and an FAA Certified Flight Instructor. Chawla served as Flight Engineer and Mission Specialist 2 for STS-107. She received a bachelor of science in aeronautical engineering from Punjab Engineering College, India, in 1982, a master of science in aerospace engineering from the University of Texas-Arlington in 1984, and a doctorate in aerospace engineering from the University of Colorado-Boulder in 1988. As a member of the Red Team, Chawla, with CDR Rick Husband, was responsible for maneuvering Columbia as part of several experiments in the shuttle's payload bay. Chawla also worked with the following experiments: Astroculture (AST); Advanced Protein Crystal Facility (APCF); Commercial Protein Crystal Growth (CPCG_PCF); Biotechnology Demonstration System (BDS); ESA Biopack (eight experiments); Combustion Module (CM-2), which included the Laminar Soot Processes (LSP), Water Mist Fire Suppression (MIST) and Structures of Flame Balls at Low Lewisnumber (SOFBALL) experiments; Mechanics of Granular Materials (MGM); Vapor Compression Distillation Flight Experiment (VCD FE); and the Zeolite Crystal Growth Furnace (ZCG).

Selected by NASA in December 1994, Chawla was the prime robotic arm operator on STS-87 in 1997, the fourth U.S. Microgravity Payload flight. STS-87 focused on how the weightless environment of space affects various physical processes. Prior to STS-107, Chawla logged more than 376 hours in space.

atlantis

the big newz today .. sunita is coming back.. he he he .. indian take pride in identifying with anything that is hardly theirs and then go round blabbering abt it..
but this post is abt the shuttle..
Atlantis, the fourth orbiter to become operational at Kennedy Space Center, was named after the primary research vessel for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts from 1930 to 1966. The two-masted, 460-ton ketch was the first U.S. vessel to be used for oceanographic research. Such research was considered to be one of the last bastions of the sailing vessel as steam-and-diesel-powered vessels dominated the waterways.

The steel-hulled ocean research ship was approximately 140 feet long and 29 feet wide to add to her stability. She featured a crew of 17 and room for five scientists. The research personnel worked in two onboard laboratories, examining water samples and marine life brought to the surface by two large winches from thousands of feet below the surface. The water samples taken at different depths varied in temperature, providing clues to the flow of ocean currents. The crew also used the first electronic sounding devices to map the ocean floor.

The spaceship Atlantis has carried on the spirit of the sailing vessel with several important voyages of its own, including the Galileo planetary explorer mission in 1989 and the deployment of the Arthur Holley Compton Gamma Ray Observatory in 1991.