On 12 June, the IISL President attended the first day of the COPUOS session as IISL observer. That afternoon, a special event was hosted to honour the 50th anniversary of Valentina Tersehkova's flight, the first woman in space on 16 June 1963.

A panel composed of very special women from different professional backgrounds and from all regions of the world gave inspiring talks and answered questions during this 3 hour panel, moderated by Mazlan Othman, director of UN-OOSA.

IISL board member Maureen Williams participated as space lawyer and representative from Latin America and paid tribute to the IISL, including its great female space icons Eilene Galloway and Isabella Diederiks-Verschoor.

The participants were:

• Valentina Tereshkova
• Abimbola Alale, Nigcomsat, Nigeria
• Roberta Bondar, astronaut, Canada
• Amalia Ercoli, Politecnico of Milano, Italy
• Chiaki Mukai, astronaut, Japan
• Geraldine Naja, ESA (absent, talk presented by the French embassy)
• Mazlan Othman, UN-OOSA, Malaysia
• Julie Sattler, Lockheed, USA
• Maureen Willams, ILA, IISL, Argentina
• Liu Yang, taikonaut, China
• Karen Nyberg - astronaut, USA, with a video message from the ISS

The photo album for this very special, unforgettable and unique event can be found here.