University of Colorado Relives Shuttle Tragedy
BOULDER, Colo.
As the University of Colorado at Boulder mourned the death of graduate Dr. Kalpana Chawla on the space shuttle Columbia earlier this month, the university community could not help but remember another esteemed alumnus, Ellison Onizuka, who died in the Challenger explosion in January 1986.
“It’s difficult to express the sense of sadness and disbelief we all feel today for the loss of Dr. Chawla, one of our distinguished astronaut-alumni of the aerospace engineering program. Along with Ellison Onizuka, who died on the Challenger in 1986, CU-Boulder now has lost two of its shining stars to shuttle disasters,” said Dr. Phil DiStefano, provost and executive vice chancellor for academic affairs, in a statement.
Chawla, 41, was born in Karnal, India, and received an aeronautical engineering degree from Punjab Engineering College in 1982. Chawla immigrated to the United States in the 1980s, earning a master’s from the University of Texas in 1984 and a doctorate from CU-Boulder in 1988. She became an astronaut in 1994 and logged 376 hours in space during her first shuttle flight in 1997.
