Aaron Cohen Passes Away

Aaron Cohen, 79, who served the space program tirelessly in NASA, academia and the private sector, passed away yesterday according to a press release from NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC). Mr. Cohen was JSC Director from1986-1993, a term that included recovering from the 1986 space shuttle Challenger tragedy. He was a highly respected NASA engineer and manager, who took his skills to Texas A&M University, his alma mater, after retiring from NASA in 1993. He also was a technical adviser to Kistler Aerospace — which almost succeeded in building a commercial reusable space launch vehicle — when that company was getting off the ground in the 1990s. According to the NASA statement, he died after a lengthy illness.