Kalpana is from the Sanskrit kalpanā (imagination, creation). A modern American baby name in the broader Indian-heritage aesthetic. Kalpana Chawla (1962-2003) — first Indian-American woman in space and first Indian-born woman in space; NASA astronaut; flew aboard STS-87 Columbia (1997) and STS-107 Columbia (2003); tragically killed when Columbia disintegrated on re-entry on February 1, 2003, killing all seven crew members; the first Indian-American astronaut and one of the foundational figures inspiring generations of Indian women in STEM; her hometown Karnal, Haryana renamed its medical college Kalpana Chawla Government Medical College in her honor; the asteroid 51826 Kalpanachawla, the Indian Earth-observation satellite Kalpana-1 (launched 2002, renamed after her death), and dozens of schools and scholarships bear her name. Kalpana (1948 film) — iconic Indian dance film by Uday Shankar; Cannes Film Festival selection (1949); one of the foundational works of Indian classical dance cinema. Kalpana Mohan — Indian actress (Tamil cinema). Kalpana Patowary — Indian Bhojpuri folk singer. Kalpana Saroj (born 1961) — Indian businesswoman; Padma Shri (2013); rags-to-riches Dalit feminist entrepreneur.
Featured throughout space exploration and Indian heritage.
Kalpana does not currently appear in the US Social Security Administration's top 1,000 girls' names, so we don't publish a US rank or birth count for it. That says nothing about the name's standing elsewhere in the world — only that it sits outside the ranked US data we rely on.
In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Kalpana reduce to 2, The Peacemaker. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.