Mourning the Columbia
Posted Feb 07, 2003

Both in terms of the lives lost and the demise of the mission itself, we at The Law Office of Sheela Murthy and MurthyDotCom join the rest of the country and the world in mourning the U.S. Space Shuttle Columbia, lost in a tragic crash on Saturday, February 1, 2003. Among the seven astronauts selected for this fateful mission was IndianAmerican engineer, Kalpana Chawla, a U.S. immigrant. As a nation of immigrants, we take special pride in the successes of others who have come here with their dreams and aspirations.

Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee expressed the sorrow of a nation in his letter to President George Bush: "We mourn with you in this moment of grief. Our hearts go out to the bright young men and women who were on that spacecraft. For us in India, we felt that since one of them was an Indian-born woman it adds a special poignancy to the tragedy."

Those aboard the Columbia were : Rick Husband, Commander and mechanical engineer, who piloted a shuttle flight in 1999; William McCool, former test pilot and graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy; Michael Anderson, physicist responsible for the shuttle science mission; David Brown, U.S. Navy captain, aviator, and flight surgeon; Kalpana Chawla, prime robotic arm operator and first Indian-born woman in space; Laurel Clark, U.S. Navy commander and flight surgeon; Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli astronaut and former fighter pilot in the Israeli air force. At a time when U.S. employers may feel pressured by the Administration to hire from among U.S. applicants, we take notice that NASA's selection of seven talented individuals included Chawla, an immigrant from India, and Ramon, a foreign national from Israel.

Their bravery imbues us with pride as their loss fills us with grief. But we grow stronger as a nation and in our commitment to furthering space exploration with every challenge we face, and so, we believe these lives were not lost in vain.