The Heroes of Uri's Night, this week on planetary radio.

Welcome, I'm at Kaplan of the Planetary Society with more of the human adventure across our solar system

and beyond.

The Los Angeles celebration of Uries Night came a bit early this year, but it was no less spectacular or exciting than ever.

Join me for conversations with international space station astronaut, aquanaut, and

artist Nicole Stott.

Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides, citizen astronaut Anushan Sari,

our own Bill Nye the Science Guy and others who partied for the final frontier

under space Shuttle endeavor.

Later we'll celebrate the night sky and another space trivia contest with planetary chief scientist Bruce Betts.

This year brought the 18th worldwide celebration of the first human beings flight into space.

That was Yuri Gagarin, of course, who achieved orbit and returned safely on April 12, 1961.

Uries Night was created by a group of people, including yours truly,

who believed that our destiny is among the stars.

We wanted to share our passion and joy with the whole planet. This year once again

saw hundreds of related events covering nearly every continent. While much of the

attention goes to the big parties, we've also started to see gatherings designed for kids,

like the one that happened on April 7th at the terrific Columbia Memorial Space Center

in Downey, California.

That's where I met Hannah McCallum, a young propulsion engineer at Virgin

Orbit, the rocket company that was spun off from Virgin Galactic not long ago.

You're coordinating all of this, right?

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