Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma, AC, Hero of the Soviet Union, (born 13 January 1949) is a former Indian Air Force test pilot who flew aboard Soyuz T-11 as part of the Intercosmos programe. Sharma was the first Indian to travel in space.[1][2]

ContentsLifeRakesh Sharma was born on 13 January 1949 in Patiala, Punjab to Hindu Gaur parents. He studied at St. George's Grammar School and later graduated from Nizam College, Osmania University in Hyderabad.[3] Sharma joined the Indian Air Force (IAF) in 1970 as a pilot officer after joining the National Defence Academy as an IAF cadet in 1966. During the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, he flew missions in his MiG aircraft with considerable success.[4]

He was a test pilot in the IAF. He was selected on 20 September 1982 to become a cosmonaut and go into space as part of a joint programe between the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and the Soviet Intercosmos space program.[4]

In 1984 he became the first citizen of India to go into space when he flew aboard the Soviet rocket Soyuz T-11 blasted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic on 2 April 1984. The Soyuz T-11 docked and transferred the three member Soviet-Indian international crew which also included the Ship's Commander Y.V. Malyshev and Flight Engineer G.M. Strekalov (USSR) to the Salyut 7 Orbital Station. He spent 7 days 21 hours and 40 minutes aboard the Salyut 7 during which his team conducted scientific and technical studies which included 43 experimental sessions. His work was mainly in the fields of bio-medicine and remote sensing.[4]

The crew held a joint television news conference with officials in Moscow and then Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Saare Jahan Se Achcha (the best in the world), said Sharma when Indira Gandhi asked him how India looked from outer space. India became the 14th nation to send a man to outer space.[4]

He retired with the rank of Wing Commander. He joined the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited in 1987 and served as Chief Test Pilot in the HAL Nashik Division until 1992, before moving on to Bangalore to work as the Chief Test Pilot of HAL. He was also associated with the Light Combat Aircraft Tejas. He lives at Coonoor with his wife Madhu Sharma.[4]

Rakesh Sharma

Rakesh SharmaKalpana Chawla

Kalpana Chawla (March 17, 1962[2][a] – February 1, 2003) was born in Karnal, India. She was the first Indian-American astronaut[3] and first Indian woman in space.[4] She first flew on Space Shuttle Columbia in 1997 as a mission specialist and primary robotic arm operator. In 2003, Chawla was one of the seven crew members killed in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster.[5]

ContentsEarly lifeChawla was born in Karnal, India. She completed her earlier schooling at Tagore Baal Niketan Senior Secondary School, Karnal and completed her Bachelor of Engineering degree in Aeronautical Engineering at Punjab Engineering College at Chandigarh in 1982. She moved to the United States in 1982 where she obtained a Master of Science degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington in 1984. Determined to become an astronaut even in the face of the Challenger disaster, Chawla went on to earn a second Masters in 1986 and a PhD in aerospace engineering in 1988 from the University of Colorado at Boulder.[6]

CareerIn 1988 she began working at the NASA Ames Research Center as Vice President of Overset Methods, Inc. where she did Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) research on Vertical/Short Takeoff and Landing concepts.[7] Chawla held a Certificated Flight Instructor rating for airplanes, gliders and Commercial Pilot licenses for single and multi-engine airplanes, seaplanes and gliders.[8]

Becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen in April, 1991, Chawla applied for the NASA Astronaut Corps.[2] She joined the Corps in March 1995 and was selected for her first flight in 1996. She spoke the following words while traveling in the weightlessness of space, "You are just your intelligence". She had traveled 10.67 million km, as many as 252 times around the Earth.Her first space mission began on November 19, 1997 as part of the six-astronaut crew that flew the Space Shuttle Columbia flight STS-87. Chawla was the first Indian-born woman and the second Indian person to fly in space, following cosmonaut Rakesh Sharma who flew in 1984 on the Soyuz T-11. On her first mission, Chawla traveled over 10.4 million miles in 252 orbits of the earth, logging more than 372 hours in space.[9] During STS-87, she was responsible for deploying the Spartan Satellite which malfunctioned, necessitating a spacewalk by Winston Scott and Takao Doi to capture the satellite. A five-month NASA investigation fully exonerated Chawla by identifying errors in software interfaces and the defined procedures of flight crew and ground control.

Kalpana Chawla

Spend more time writing and less time formatting.The Office Fluent user interface presents the right tools when you need them, making it easy to format your documents quickly. Now you can find the right features in Office Word 2007 to make your documents communicate more effectively. Using Quick Styles and Document Themes, you can quickly change the appearance of text, tables, and graphics throughout the entire document to match your preferred style or color scheme.

Communicate more effectively with SmartArt diagrams and new charting tools.New SmartArt diagrams and a new charting engine help you create great-looking content with 3-D shapes, transparency, drop shadows, and other effects.

Quickly assemble documents using Building Blocks.Building Blocks in Office Word 2007 can be used to assemble documents from frequently used or predefined content such as disclaimer text, pull quotes, sidebars, cover pages, and other types of content. This will help ensure you don't spend needless time recreating content or copying and pasting between documents; it also helps ensure consistency across all of the documents created within your organization.

Save as PDF or XPS directly from Office Word 2007.Office Word 2007 offers you a choice for sharing documents with other people. You can convert your Word documents to Portable Document Format (PDF) or XML Paper Specification (XPS) format without the addition of third-party tools to help ensure broad communication with users on any platform.1

Publish and maintain blogs directly from Office Word 2007.You can now publish blogs directly from Office Word 2007. You can configure Office Word 2007 to link directly to your blog site, and use the rich Word experience to create blogs with images, tables, and advanced text formatting features.

Microsoft Office Word 2007 Top 10 BenefitsMicrosoft Office Word 2007 helps people create and share professional-looking content by combining a comprehensive set of writing tools with the easy-to-use Microsoft Office Fluent user interface. Here are the top 10 ways Office Word 2007 can help you create professional-looking content faster.                                                      

Master your document review processes using Office Word 2007 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.With built-in workflow services in Office SharePoint Server 2007, you can initiate and track document review and approval processes from within Office Word 2007 to help accelerate review cycles across your organization without forcing people to learn new tools.

Connect your documents to business information.Create dynamic Smart Documents that update themselves by connecting to your back-end systems using new document controls and data bindings. By using the new XML integration capability, organizations can deploy intelligent templates to assist people in creating highly structured documents.

Remove tracked changes, comments, and hidden text from your documents.Detect and remove unwanted comments, hidden text, or personally identifiable information using the Document Inspector to help ensure that sensitive information doesn't escape when your documents are published.

Use the tri-pane review panel to compare and combine documents.Office Word 2007 makes it easy to find out what changes were made to a document. A new tri-pane review panel helps you see both versions of a document with deleted, inserted, and moved text clearly marked.

Reduce your file sizes and improve corrupt file recovery.The new Ecma Office Open XML Formats offer a dramatic reduction in file size as well as improvement in recovery for damaged files. These new formats provide a tremendous savings to storage and bandwidth requirements, and reduce the burden on IT personnel.