“What really set me set me on the straight and narrow was the 2003 Columbia accident. I was in 11th grade. I found out that a first-generation Indian immigrant was on that mission named Kalpana Chawla. Like me, she was born and raised in India. She came to the United States to do her masters and then joined Ames Research Center as an aerospace engineer, then became an astronaut. So in my mind, it solidified that there was a path for someone like me to make it to NASA.
“One of the other interesting things is that her and my mom have birthdays less than a month than apart. And they were born in neighboring states. That was a connection. Unfortunately, I never had the chance to meet her and did not know about her before the accident. But I think that in itself motivated me and drove me to take the mantle and run with it for the next generation.
“When I worked on the Space Launch System (SLS), I was doing the imagery integration. This goes back to the connection to the Columbia accident. The people who worked on that mission and helped with the imagery analysis are some of the same people I get to work with today. It was kind of a surreal thing. We were working on this new vehicle together, and when it flies, it will be like I paid homage — not only to the engineers who worked on the imagery — but also to Kalpana Chawla, because I saw her journey and achieved my goal of becoming a NASA aerospace engineer and helped build the SLS. My work will be on that rocket when it flies and this will bring my childhood dream to fruition.”
— Harsha Rayapati, Aerospace Engineer, Marshall Space Flight Center
Image Credit: NASA / Emmett Given
Interviewer: NASA / Thalia Patrinos