CONTENTS
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Today at Langley Research Center: âFirst to Mars â Viking Precedents and Cultureâ with Rachel Tillman
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Steven Hirshorn Presents on Life Lessons from the Columbia Tragedy and NASAâs Return to Flight: Tuesday, July 22
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Join Us on July 24: Julie Klinger Presents on âChinaâLatin America Space Cooperation: A Brief Historyâ
Today at Langley Research Center: âFirst to Mars â Viking Precedents and Cultureâ with Rachel Tillman
Friday, July 11
Talk from 4â5:30 PM Eastern Time Q&A: 5:30â6 PM Eastern Time
Pearl Young Theater at NASAâs Langley Research Center
See the attached flyer for details about the event and how to attend.
Steven Hirshorn Presents on Life Lessons from the Columbia Tragedy and NASAâs Return to Flightâ Tuesday, July 22

Tuesday, July 22 at 12:00 pm EDT / 11:00 am CDT / 10:00 am PDT
July 26, 2025, marks the 20th anniversary of the beginning of STS-114, the Return to Flight mission launched two and a half years after the Columbia tragedy. In memory
of the event, the NASA History Office is pleased to present a talk by Steven Hirshorn, author of a new book in the NASA History Series entitled Ascension: Life Lessons from the Space Shuttle Columbia Tragedy for Engineers, Managers, and Leaders.
Hirshorn, currently NASAâs Chief Engineer for Aeronautics, will discuss his experiences as the mission operations representative to the Space Shuttle Orbiter Project Office
on the day Columbia and its crew were lost. He describes NASAâs sobering work in search of answers in the wake of the tragedy, and the crucial technical and organizational changes that needed to take place for the Space Shuttle Program to resume.
With technical expertise and deeply human, visceral insight, Hirshorn condenses simply stated life lessons valuable to the engineers, managers, and leaders advancing human
spaceflight today.
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Join Us on July 24: Julie Klinger Presents âChinaâLatin America Space Cooperation: A Brief Historyâ

âChina-Latin America Space Cooperation: A Brief Historyâ
Julie Klinger (Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna and University of Delaware)
Thursday, July 24 at 2:00 pm EDT / 1:00 pm CDT / 11:00 am PDT
Neither the evolution of global space politics, nor the evolving nature of China-Latin America relations can be understood without considering the roles played by Latin America's and China's space programs
in national, bilateral, and multilateral engagements. This talk provides a brief historical overview of bilateral outer space cooperation between China and Latin American countries. Multilateral engagements by all parties shaped the dawn of the space age in
the 1960s, while bilateral engagements date back to 1984.
Julie Michelle Klinger is currently a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, and an Associate
Professor in the Department of Geography and Spatial Sciences at the University of Delaware. Dr. Klinger and her research team conduct in-depth field-based and global-scope research on competing uses for energy-transition metals, materials, and infrastructures.
She has published numerous articles on rare earth elements, natural resource use, environmental politics, and outer space, including the award-winning 2018 book Rare Earth Frontiers: From Terrestrial Subsoils to Lunar Landscapes. She holds a PhD in
Geography from the University of California, Berkeley.
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