who was the first indian astronout who went to space?

Answer 1

RAKESH SHARMA.

Answer 2

Rakesh Sharma (born January 13, 1949 in Patiala, Punjab, India) was the first Indian and 138th man to visit space.

Rakesh Sharma, then squadron leader and pilot with the Indian Air Force embarked on the mission in 1984 as part of a joint space program between the Indian Space Research Organisation and the Soviet Interkosmos space program and spent eight days in space aboard the Salyut 7 space station. Launched along with two other Soviet cosmonauts aboard Soyuz T-11 on the second of April 1984, was 35 year old Rakesh Sharma. During the flight, Squadron Leader Sharma conducted multi-spectral photography of northern India in anticipation of the construction of hydroelectric power stations in the Himalayas. In a famous incident, he was asked by the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi how India looked from the space and he replied, Saare Jahan Se Achcha, (translates to better than all the world) which was from the first line of a famous poem by Muhammad Iqbal. He was conferred with the honour of Hero of Soviet Union upon his return from space.

Squadron Leader Sharma and his backup, Wing Commander Ravish Malhotra, also prepared an elaborate series of zero-gravity Yoga exercises which the former had practised aboard the Salyut 7. Retired with the rank of Wing Commander, Rakesh Sharma joined Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) as a test pilot. He was based at the Aircraft & Systems Testing Establishment (ASTE) in Bangalore and worked on the indigenous Light Combat Aircraft program.

Rakesh Sharma has now retired from active employment..

Answer 3

There was a visitor, who was an Indian Air Force Officer, on a Russian space mission, before Miss Kalpana Chawla.

Miss Kalpana Chawla was full crew member on an American mission, that had a problem with loss of titles (thermal insulation ceramic tiles), at take off, the shuttle burned up on re-entry, after full filling its objectives in space, there were no survivors.

She was Indian born USA citizen.

Answer 4

squadron leader Rakesh Sharma.in 1984

Answer 5

Big Chief Crazy Rocket

Answer 6

rakesh sharma
1st indian and 138th human to go into space

Answer 7

Where did the other Indian Astonouts go to?

Answer 8

http://www.asianweek.com/2003_02_07/news_firstindian.html

Sam Rao, former director of the Indo-American Community Center in Santa Clara, Calif., vividly remembers astronaut Kalpana Chawla’s 1999 visit to the Bay Area. His center, which focuses on making connections between youth and seniors, had worked hard to organize the event honoring Chawla as an important role model.
“Since she was with NASA, there were all kinds of things that we had to go through to be cleared before she could come speak,” Rao said. “But once it was cleared, she was so enthusiastic, she even called me ahead of time to discuss her presentation.”

Rao said that Chawla was a huge hit with the audience of some 300 at the Louis Meyer Center, located on the campus of Santa Clara University.

“She was so easy-going. She stayed after her presentation and answered questions and signed autographs for over an hour,” Rao said. “It’s just so sad.”

Chawla, 41, was one of the seven astronauts on board the space shuttle Columbia, which disintegrated upon reentry to Earth Feb. 1 above the central Texas plains, after a 16-day scientific mission. She was the first and only Indian American and Asian Pacific American woman to travel into space.
The Columbia, the oldest shuttle in the U.S. fleet, was streaking through the sky at 12,500 mph when it burst into flames at about 9 a.m., shortly after reentering Earth’s atmosphere. The crew, six Americans and the first Israeli astronaut, was scheduled to land in Florida about 15 minutes later.

“America’s space program will go on,” President Bush declared in an outdoor ceremony mourning the seven Columbia astronauts, on Feb. 4.

About Chawla, Bush said: “She left India as a student, but she would see the nation of her birth, all of it, from hundreds of miles above.”

Small Village to Outer Space

When Chawla left home more than 20 years ago, small-town India expected its young women to get married, have babies and settle into lives dictated by generations of tradition.

But Chawla, the youngest daughter in a wealthy factory-owning family, chose another path. Her ambitions took her from her hometown in northern India to a doctorate in aerospace engineering from the University of Colorado, to a life in Texas — and finally to the weightlessness of space.

In Karnal, a drab industrial town where cars jockey for space on pitted asphalt streets with buffalo carts and bicycle rickshaws, Chawla had long been a hero. Under a chilly, steel-gray sky on Sunday, she was mourned like one.

Dozens of people stopped by her childhood home, and hundreds gathered at her high school, Tagore Baal Niketan, to pray at a makeshift shrine. In the Hindu tradition, incense burned in front of her photograph, which was draped in garlands of marigolds.

Chawla’s 1997 space flight, the first by an Indian-born woman, had made her a powerful symbol of achievement.

Part tomboy who cut her own hair and part shy bookworm, Chawla dismayed her family as a teenager by announcing she wanted to study aeronautical engineering at Punjab University, some 100 miles from home. The resistance was intense.

“Only because I was a girl, people gave a hard time to my mother because she sent me to school in another town,” Chawla said in a 1998 interview with News-India Times. “How would you feel if people don’t approve of what you are doing or your mother is doing for you?”

Later, she went much further from home, earning an advanced degree in aeronautical engineering from the University of Texas and a doctorate from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Chawla’s professional career prior to joining NASA was grounded in research. In 1988, she was hired by MCAT Institute in San Jose, Calif., where she was responsible for simulation and analysis of flow physics pertaining to the operation of powered-lift aircrafts.

In 1993, she joined Overset Methods Inc., as vice president and research scientist, where she was responsible for the development of techniques to perform aerodynamic optimization.

A woman from a generation and culture where arranged marriages were the norm, Chawla married an American flight instructor, Jean-Pierre Harrison. In a time when many Indian women still mark their lives by the number of sons they’ve had, Chawla and Harrison had no children.

Answer 9

well... none other that our own.. rakesh sharma!