WASHINGTON, Nov 19: Kalpana Chawla became the first Indian woman to go into space with US space shuttle Columbia taking off from Florida's Kennedy Space Centre late on Tuesday night for a 16-day research mission. Aerospace Engineer Chawla is part of the six-member crew aboard the Columbia, the oldest of NASA's four shuttles, which overcame a minor fuelling problem to prepare for the launch scheduled at 1.16 AM (IST).Chawla is accompanied by team leader Kevin Kregel, Japanese Takao Doi, Ukrainian Leonid Kadenyuk, co-pilot Steven Lindsey and Flight Engineer Winston Scott, the last two being from the US.In a pre-flight interview with NASA, Karnal-born 37-year-old Chawla said, ``For me it was far-fetched to think I would get to fly on the space shuttle because I lived in India in very small town, and forget about space, I did not even know if my folks would allow me to go to an engineering college.''The Columbia's countdown fell about three hours behind schedule yesterday because of a problem in loading supercold fuel for the shuttle's electricity generators.A helium umbilical was not providing sufficient gas for the operation.The fuelling began after a repair team tightened fittings on the troublesome umbilical.``We have solved the problem and managers are comfortable that they will get back on schedule,'' agency spokesman Joel Well was quoted as saying.``The launch team is looking forward to a successful launch,'' National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) test director Doug Lyons was quoted as saying.Columbia's mission includes the first spacewalk by a Japanese astronaut and the release of a free-flying satellite to study the sun.The shuttle will also carry a suite of microgravity experiments and an instrument to measure ozone in the earth's atmosphere.
