Discovery: Champion of the Space Shuttle Fleet (Smithsonian Series)
Valerie Neal is curator for human spaceflight in the Space Shuttle and International Space Station era at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. Before joining the Smithsonian, she worked with NASA on early shuttle missions. She now curates exhibitions at the NASM and oversees more than 1,500 artifacts, principal among them the orbiterDiscovery, which is housed in the NASM's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in northern Virginia. She lives in Washington, D.C.