Kalpana Kalahasti (born 1974) is an Indian scientist and Electronics and Communication Engineer working in the

Indian Space Research Organisation The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO ) is India's national List of government space agencies, space agency, headquartered in Bengaluru, Karnataka. It serves as the principal research and development arm of the Department of Space (DoS), ...

(ISRO). She currently serves as the Associate Project director of the

Chandrayaan-3 Chandrayaan-3 ( ) is the third mission in the Chandrayaan programme, a series of Exploration of the Moon, lunar-exploration missions developed by the ISRO, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). The mission consists of a Chandrayaan-2#Vikra ...

mission. Kalpana has been instrumental in the construction of various satellites of India and was involved in the

Chandrayaan-2 Chandrayaan-2 (; from Sanskrit: , "Moon" and , "craft, vehicle") is the second lunar exploration mission developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) after Chandrayaan-1. It consists of a lunar orbiter, the ''Vikram'' lunar l ...

mission.

Early life and education

Kalpana was born in

Chennai Chennai, also known as Madras (List of renamed places in India#Tamil Nadu, its official name until 1996), is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Tamil Nadu by population, largest city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost states and ...

in 1974. She graduated in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Madras University.

Career

In 2000, she joined

ISRO The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO ) is India's national space agency, headquartered in Bengaluru, Karnataka. It serves as the principal research and development arm of the Department of Space (DoS), overseen by the Prime Minister o ...

as a scientist. In the early years, Kalpana worked on various satellite projects and played a key role in the successful launch of several communication and

remote sensing Remote sensing is the acquisition of information about an physical object, object or phenomenon without making physical contact with the object, in contrast to in situ or on-site observation. The term is applied especially to acquiring inform ...

satellites. She has been at the forefront from developing propulsion systems for accurate satellite positioning to designing advanced imaging equipment to capture high-resolution images of the Earth. She eventually became a part of

mission a landmark project for ISRO. In 2019, she was appointed as the Associate Project Director of the

mission and was instrumental in designing and optimizing the lunar lander systems.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:K, Kalpana Living people Indian Space Research Organisation people Indian Institute of Science alumni Date of birth missing (living people) Indian women engineers 21st-century Indian engineers 21st-century Indian women scientists Women planetary scientists Planetary scientists 1980 births