ASTRONAUTS from India

Top 2

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Indian Astronauts of all time. This list of famous Indian Astronauts is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.

1. Kalpana Chawla (1961 - 2003)

With an HPI of 56.06, Kalpana Chawla is the most famous Indian Astronaut.  Her biography has been translated into 63 different languages on wikipedia.

Kalpana Chawla (17 March 1962 –1 February 2003) was an Indian-born American astronaut and aerospace engineer who was the first woman of Indian origin to fly to space. Chawla expressed an interest in aerospace engineering from an early age and took engineering classes at Dayal Singh College and Punjab Engineering College in India. She then traveled to the United States, where she earned her MSc and PhD, becoming a naturalized United States citizen in the early 1990s. She first flew on Space Shuttle Columbia in 1997 as a mission specialist and robotic arm operator aboard STS-87. Her role in the flight caused some controversy due to the failed deployment of the Shuttle-Pointed Autonomous Research Tool for Astronomy ("Spartan") module. Chawla's second flight was in 2003 on STS-107, the final flight of Columbia. She was one of the seven crew members who died in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster when the spacecraft disintegrated during its reentry into the Earth's atmosphere on 1 February 2003. Chawla was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, the NASA Space Flight Medal, and the NASA Distinguished Service Medal. Several buildings, spacecraft, and extraterrestrial landmarks are named in her honor.

2. Rakesh Sharma (b. 1949)

With an HPI of 54.17, Rakesh Sharma is the 2nd most famous Indian Astronaut.  His biography has been translated into 43 different languages.

Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma, AC (born 13 January 1949) is an Indian astronaut and a former Indian Air Force officer. He flew aboard Soyuz T-11 on 3 April 1984 as part of the Soviet Interkosmos programme. He is the only Indian citizen to travel in space, although there have been other astronauts of Indian origin who travelled to space, who were not Indian citizens. Another Air Force pilot, Ravish Malhotra, was placed on standby.