New York: Kalpana Chawla had a dream in her eyes when she left for what would be her last mission in space. And she died doing what she liked most.

She had overcome the scepticism of her father and reservations of the man who interviewed her in an Indian engineering college to become an astronaut against all odds.

"Just looking at Earth, looking at stars during the night part of Earth, just looking at our planet roll by and speed at which (it) goes by and the awe that it inspires, just so many good thoughts come to my mind when you see all that," she said in an interview just prior to leaving on her fatal mission.

The Columbia space shuttle, in which Chawla was the mission specialist, disintegrated over the American state of Texas just 16 minutes before its scheduled landing on February 1, killing her and six other crew members.

Chawla, 41, who was on her second space mission, said, "Doing it again is like a dream, a good dream once again." Little did she know that she would not make it back to her family.

Chawla's parents and several relatives had travelled to the United States from India to witness her go up to and come back from space and were shocked when told of the tragedy.

Her colleagues remember her as a quiet and modest but determined person.

Don Seath, who taught her aerodynamics at the University of Texas at Arlington, said she was a "very good student, quite excellent. She was in my aerodynamics class and she performed exceedingly well. She was very bright".

In an interview with the 'New York Times' after Columbia's loss, Seath said when he heard she had been accepted for the programme to become an astronaut, "I was thrilled but also surprised. She just did not seem to fit the type."

Chawla might not be brash like some other astronauts, but she was determined and had a life-long wish to go into space. In the United States, she studied the subjects, which she knew could help her achieve her dream.

In another interview, she revealed when she told her father that she wanted to study aerospace engineering, he scoffed. She should be a doctor or a teacher, he told her.

Chawla's father would not go with her when she went to attend an interview at Punjab Engineering College. Instead, her mother accompanied her to the college where a male professor told her that engineering wasn't "ladylike".

However, Chawla did not let sexism or even the lack of an aerospace programme in India discourage her. She emigrated to the United States, earned a doctoral degree in aerospace engineering and – against all odds – became an astronaut.

"I was interested in aerospace and flying and US is really the best place in the world for flying," she had told a magazine in 1998.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) selected her and 19 others from a group of 4,000 applicants for the programme and on November 19, 1997, she became the first person from India to fly in an American space shuttle. She was assigned to Columbia as a mission specialist and prime robotic arms operator.

PTI