To kick off the Yuri’s Night DC celebrations, the Arlington, VA, based Zero Gravity Corporation (ZERO-G) took a couple of Yuri’s Night shirts on a recent Weightless Experience aboard the company’s specially-modified Boeing 727 aircraft.

Parabolic flight coaches Travis and Krysta Cossitt were eager to show off their t-shirts and get everyone on the flight excited for Yuri’s Night with stickers and temporary tattoos.

ZERO-G will be celebrating at the Science Club in Washington, DC ,this year, bringing tons of cool spacey swag along with them.  Events will include space trivia contests, LEGO spaceship building competitions, prizes from ThinkGeek.com, and music from One Love Massive!

After the party in DC, ZERO-G will be heading to Ft. Lauderdale for their 300th commercial flight on April 14th.  Where will YOU be celebrating Yuri’s Night?? [I'll be on ZG-300--and you could be too! ~Tim]

If you attended Yuri’s Night last year, there’s a good chance that you got to see First Orbit, a documentary film by Christopher Riley which recreates Gagarin’s historic flight as he himself would have seen it. First Orbit uses footage collected in collaboration with the European Space Agency and the International Space Station to depict Gagarin’s view during the 108-minute flight, complete with recordings of Gagarin during the flight and an original score by composer Philip Sheppard.

First Orbit is still available on YouTube, where it has received over 3.3 million views, but for the first time, the film is now available in a physical format with translations in over 30 languages. Pick up the DVD or Blu-ray at http://www.firstorbit.org/buy-the-film.php, or search for it on Amazon.com.

To help make First Orbit available to viewers around the world, we’re giving out DVDs of the film to five randomly-selected Yuri’s Night parties. All events are eligible; just make sure your event is signed up by midnight GMT on Wednesday, March 28. We’re at over 100 events now, so if you’ve been slacking off on registering your party, join in before it’s too late!

In case you hadn’t yet seen, the Yuri’s Night store is now open for business in 2012! Visit shop.yurisnight.net to purchase all the latest Yuri’s Night goodies, including tattoos, all-new stickers with YN information on the backing, and the ever-essential Party Pack, filled with all the needed essentials to host a fantastic YN event! An all-new layout through Shopify should make your purchasing experience easier than ever; don’t forget to click on All Items to see the full list of store content.

Pick up your Yuri’s Night goodies today!

And now a word from Greg Wagner, our Yuri’s Night Director of Contests:

The only constant is change,” said the philosopher Heraclitus.  And oh, how we know.  In fact, we often become swept up in our dreams of change – of a better, grander future for humanity.  But sometimes it is also worthwhile to look back and celebrate our past and our progression from the modest to the majestic – and Yuri’s Night wants to do just this by hosting a contest of almost epic proportions!  A FLASHBACK photo contest, to be exact.

For the contest, Yuri’s Night invites you to let your nostalgia flow freely and submit your favorite photograph from a past Yuri’s Night which you feel epitomizes the message and hopes and purpose of Yuri’s Night.  From this sea of sentimentality the Executive Board will designate three of the submissions as “Extra Awesome” and award their submitters with the most excellent prize of an autographed CD of John Marmie’s Space Songs.  To achieve this distinction, the photograph must be taken from an actual Yuri’s Night event.  The judges will be weighing the wishes of the people in their decision, so be sure to garner as many likes and retweets as is humanly possible.

To submit your photograph (please only submit pictures that you have taken or hold the rights to!), simply email it as an attachment, along with a description of 1-3 sentences, to flashback@yurisnight.net.  From this email it will automatically be posted to live.yurisnight.net as well as our Facebook page. All photos will be publicly available for viewing and subject to reuse by Yuri’s Night through a Creative Commons license.  The submission period will close at 0:00 Greenwich Mean Time on April 9th, 2012 11:59 PM Eastern Time on April 30.  So go, world, and reminisce, and reflect, and remember!  Let the past sing again!

We just wanted to remind you that we are less than 2 months away from Yuri’s Night 2012! Hopefully you have started working on awesome party plans for April 12 with your friends and neighbors. If you haven’t thought about setting up your own party yet, now is the time. Here are some ideas that you should think about as you plan your event, large or small:

• Yuri’s Night events & parties can be big or small, be it a few people at your house or hundreds at a bar, museum, school, or space center
• Consider planning big. If you plan for your event at a larger community center, bar, etc, more people from your area can join you when they find your party online.
• The more people helping, the more awesome your party can be! Consider working with a local museum, planetarium, bar, community center, local space or astronomy group to get their help, their ideas, and simply to tell them about Yuri’s Night! (though unlikely, maybe they didn’t even know about this great international event)
• Publicity is everything. Once you have a good-sized venue, fill it up with people! They don’t have to be space geeks, but maybe they’re just interested and want to have a good time. Consider making an event on Facebook, publicizing on Twitter, writing to your local newspaper (how else will they learn about a neat local event?), and calling or e-mailing your local radio stations (in many places they will publicize local non-profit events for free or even show up).
• Team up with local DJs or bands (who can play music at your event) and companies (who can help sponsor your event).

Lastly, if you have still not registered your party, do so this week!  If you register your event by 2/24 12:12 EST you will be entered for a chance to win a director’s autographed copy of Orphans of Apollo!  Special thanks to director Michael Potter for the signed DVD’s of Orphans of Apollo!  We’ll announce the winner later in the day on Friday 2/24.

Enough information and tips.  Go out, start planning, and Rock The Planet!

Parties will be approved and added to the map starting later this evening; we’ll have the party list and some other minor fixes up soon after. Remember, registration is free, so make sure to sign up your party today! Help us Rock The Planet as we make 2012 the biggest year for Yuri’s Night yet!

“Yuri’s Night 2012: Make an Impact” calls on event organizers and attendees around the world to both remember the impact of space travel on human society and make their own impact locally through their Yuri’s Night event. The slogan also slyly hints at the hype surrounding 2012 as the year of the supposed Mayan end-of-the-world prophesies.

“With this slogan, we call on all Yuri’s Night parties to ‘make an impact,’ whether it be through educating attendees about space, helping to train a new generation of organizers and leaders, or simply celebrating the importance of space exploration in their local communities,” said Ryan Kobrick, Yuri’s Night Executive Director. “As we look to host 1,000 Yuri’s Night events next year, we are extremely excited to see artists, scientists, students, and space enthusiasts around the world join us in promoting humanity’s future in space.”

The Yuri’s Night Global Team officially kicked off the planning for Yuri’s Night 2012 last May, and has continued to plan throughout the summer for the world’s largest celebration of space next April.

About Yuri’s Night

Yuri’s Night is a global non-profit organization dedicated to hosting global celebrations of humanity’s presence in space each April 12 in commemoration of Yuri Gagarin’s first manned space flight and the inaugural launch of the Space Shuttle. Currently in its 12th year of operation, Yuri’s Night hosted over 120 parties in 35 countries in 2011, including events in Tokyo, San Francisco, the NASA Ames Research Center, and the International Space Station.

For more information about Yuri’s Night, visit www.yurisnight.net.

We want your event in 2012 to be the best it has ever been, and that means that you need to start thinking about planning today.  What kind of event are you going to host and who is going to help plan the event?  Will you host it at your school, a local bar, your workplace, a park?  Start looking at venues now, so that you’re ready for the big day on April 12!

You will be able to register your event on the Yuri’s Night website when the new site goes live in the next couple months.  Keep checking back or subscribe to our RSS feed to get all the latest updates!

The Presentation of Space Award is given each year “for outstanding achievement in highlighting past and present events in space exploration and development. This award is for excellence in non-fiction efforts, such as documentaries and other projects to inform and enlighten the public“, with Yuri’s Night partners Orphans of Apollo and Spacevidcast among the prior recipients.

The Presentation of Space Award will be officially presented at the NewSpace Awards Gala during the Space Frontier Foundation’s NewSpace 2011 Conference on the evening of July 30. Yuri’s Night Assistant Director Brice Russ and other YN notables will be on hand to accept the award.

Yuri’s Night would like to thank the Space Frontier Foundation for their recognition of our efforts to educate the public about humanity’s history in space and inspire a new generation of space leaders, advocates, and enthusiasts.

Today, we’re officially opening applications for the YN2012 Global Executive Team, the group of volunteers who work to coordinate, assist, and promote Yuri’s Night parties and events around the world. Though some positions have already been filled, we’re still looking for:

• Chief Strategist
• Director of Marketing
• Director of Merchandise
• Director of Special Projects
• Web Content Coordinators
• Director of Outreach

…and many, many more positions! Whether you’re a seasoned event organizer, a party attendee, or someone who’s just learned about Yuri’s Night, there’s a good chance that there’s a position that fits your skills on the team.

Check out http://yurisnight.net/apply-2012/ for a description of the open positions, and then submit your application at http://yurisnight.net/apply-2012/application. All positions are unpaid, part-time positions which can be done from your own home. Applications due July 12.

For further application-related questions, please contact Carolyn Belle at carolyn@yurisnight.net.