The plot thickens, and twists. This time we learn from Wiki that after the Columbia Space Shuttle disintegrated re-entering Earth’s atmosphere, there were indeed body remains found after all. According to this source, the remains of all of the bodies of the astronauts were found. Someone should really share that info with Rich Husband’s people.
Kalpana Chawla, our next look at astronaut lore, was also a music lover. She served as the shuttle’s flight engineer. She was married to Jean-Pierre Harrison, who has written a book about her and is the president of two dubious-looking companies for which I was able to find no information.
“Chawla” means “imagination” in Hindi. https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1527404/bio/According to her IMBd bio page
“Steve Morse of the band Deep Purple released the song “Contact Lost” in 2003 in memory of the Columbia disaster.[50] Chawla took three Deep Purple albums on STS-107, using their song “Space Truckin’” as a wakeup call. One of their albums was found in the shuttle’s wreckage.”
Wow, so an entire album was discovered, as well as a CD. She had room for 3 albums, and clearly must have had a player for those. These space shuttles must be roomier than a magic bus! I wonder if they ever had arguments over who got to choose the ‘wake-up’ music. I know that much Deep Purple and I’d definitely be wishing for some disintegration.
She was accused of screwing up during the previous mission, but was given a second chance. On a YT video of day 4 of that mission we learn that one of her colleague’s favorite songs is from a popular Japanese television show about puppets in space.
“Chawla first flew on Space Shuttle Columbia in 1997 as a mission specialist and robotic armoperator aboard STS-87. Her role in the flight caused some controversy due to the failed deployment of the Shuttle-Pointed Autonomous Research Tool for Astronomy (“Spartan”) module. Chawla’s second flight was in 2003 on STS-107, the final flight of Columbia.”
In an interview about her previous mission the reporter writes:
“We’d be very foolish if we tried to second-guess or tried to figure out what the actual turn of events were without having all the information… We’re six folks up here, we know what happened on our side, we’ll get together with the folks on the ground and we’ll put the whole story together and make sure it never happens again. Sure, we’re always a bit disappointed if we don’t get the full mission accomplished, but we did retrieve the satellite, and so the important thing is we’re bringing Spartan back down to Earth and it’ll get to fly another day.”
It’ll get to fly another day. And so will Chawla, but apparently just the one.
She is now in Zion, her final resting place being Zion National Park, Utah.
