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.

We’re coming up on the end of our three Yuri’s Night Contests, and have a few updates to make for each of those:

First off, all three contests close tonight, at the end of April 15–so if you’re still putting the finishing touches on your entry (or waiting until the last second to sign up for the Sweepstakes), make sure to get those in ASAP!

Once we receive all the entries, we’ll pass those on to our panels of judges and our random-selection programs. We’ve also extended the deadline on our People’s Choice voting until April 22, to give all entries an opportunity to win the prize. Go like your favorite submissions on Facebook, if you haven’t already!

Finally, we’ll be announcing the winners to all of our contests live on Spacevidcast, at their special on-location show for the launch of STS-134. This show is planned for Thursday, April 28, but may be delayed to April 29 based on the status of the Shuttle launch. Tune in to www.spacevidcast.com (exact time TBA) to find out the winners!

Today is the biggest day in the history of celebrating space exploration.

On April 12, 2011, the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s first human spaceflight and the 30th anniversary of the launch of the first Space Shuttle, Yuri’s Night is throwing over 500 parties and events around the world to commemorate our history in space and build towards a future of humanity on the Moon, Mars, and beyond. Hundreds of thousands of people are celebrating by watching our Global Webcast, entering space vacation contests, sharing pictures of their local events with the world, downloading free e-books, and meeting up in local museums, clubs, bars, backyards, schools, and observatories to learn about space–and have fun doing it.

“Everyone from Google to the Los Angeles Times is making note of this historical landmark, and I’m thrilled to see how excited people around the world are to celebrate the spirit of exploration and discovery that Yuri Gagarin embodied,” said Assistant Director Brice Russ. “Whether your nearest Yuri’s Night event is down the street or a hundred miles away, there’s something you can do to participate.”

As of 12 PM Eastern Time on 4/12, there were over 530 registered Yuri’s Night events in 74 countries on all 7 continents (including, for the second year in a row, the South Pole). Among these parties are:

• Yuri’s Night Los Angeles, the home of the first flagship YN event in 2001. Yuri’s Night co-founders George and Loretta Whitesides will be joining celebrities and hundreds of space fans to talk about Yuri’s flight and the importance and awesomeness of space at LA’s Griffith Observatory.
• Yuri’s Night Tokyo: despite the devastation of the recent tsunami in Japan, Yasuharu Kawabata and others are still meeting to celebrate Yuri’s Night with food and drink at the ALICE Aqua Garden in Chiyoda. All proceeds from party admission will be going to disaster relief efforts.
• Yuri’s Night Moscow: the Russian capital has six YN celebrations this year, not least of them the one being held by the Mars500 crew, an ESA project simulating the challenges of a manned Martian spaceflight. A greeting to YN from Mars500 is available online.

On the global level, Yuri’s Night is running three contests: the “Call to Humanity” Space Ad Contest, which calls on participants to create a print ad with the goal of inspiring public interest in space; the Global Space Sweepstakes, completely free to enter in countries around the world, and the OpenLuna Video Contest, where video editors are challenged to use Yuri’s Night’s extensive video resources to create a promotional segment for YN. The first two contests have grand prizes of space-themed vacations to Russia (including microgravity flights and Soyuz rocket launches) provided by Space Travellers and valued at $9,000 each; the final contest has a $500 cash prize. All deadlines are April 15.

For the second straight year, Yuri’s Night is partnering with the acclaimed weekly program Spacevidcast to host a YN Global Webcast (at www.spacevidcast.com) running from this evening until the wee hours of Wednesday. Ben and Cariann Higginbotham will be checking in with over two dozen parties around the globe, from Havre, Montana to Kuala Lumpur. Andrew Kessler will be on the show to give away one million e-book copies of his Martian Summer, and the SVC team will be showing clips of Yuri’s Night greetings and interviews by everyone from Bill Nye, the Science Guy to the Expedition 27 crew of the International Space Station.

Yuri’s Night is partnering with many groups and organizations. YN has teamed up with Posterous to host Yuri’s Night Live (http://live.yurisnight.net/), a website that anyone can post YN pictures, videos and links to by simply emailing submit2@yurisnight.net. Yuri’s Night is also partnering with First Orbit to premiere their film, a recreation of the view from Yuri Gagarin’s flight using footage from the International Space Station and elsewhere, and is affiliated with Yuri’s Night celebrators such as YuriGagarin50, the X PRIZE Foundation and the Space Generation Advisory Council.

Yuri’s Night would like to thank Richard Garriott, Dave Masten, the Musk Foundation, our other sponsors and partners, and everyone around the world who’s helping to celebrate 50 years of human spaceflight.

For the latest YN news, keep visiting our Yuri’s Night Blog, Facebook and Twitter pages. Rock The Planet!

In honor of the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s historic first flight into space, Yuri’s Night and Martian Summer are extremely pleased to offer an extraordinary opportunity to scientists, supporters of space exploration, and stewards of the future of humanity: we’re giving away one million pre-sale copies of Martian Summer, a new book by Andrew Kessler detailing–in candid and at times alarming detail–his experience in mission control for NASA’s Phoenix mission to Mars. To get your share of the Give-Away, visit and like http://www.facebook.com/MartianSummer?sk=app_111744128907131 between 12:00-23:59 UTC (8am-7:59pm EDT)!

This exclusive offer for a pre-sale review copy of Martian Summer — a book that already has garnered significant acclaim and is sure to generate controversy — is an opportunity for the supporters of space exploration to create a frighteningly huge, menacing, terrifying SUPERMASSIVE REVIEW MOB by relentlessly tweeting, posting and discussing the parts of the book that are important to them. Together, with this incredible, behind-the-scenes, under-the-covers glimpse of the reality of space exploration missions, we can drive conversation about the future of humanity in space.

Human Spaceflight became a reality 50 years ago with the launch of a bell-shaped capsule called “Vostok 1” on April 12th, 1961. The capsule was carrying Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who took his place in history as the first human to leave the bounds of Earth and enter outer space.

On April 12th, when celebrate this unparalleled milestone in the history of humanity and the Earth, we want to make sure we spread understanding of the importance of space exploration to all the Earth so that 50 years from now we’ll have many more Earth-shattering moments at which to rejoice.

Martian Summer Pre-Sale Download: http://www.facebook.com/MartianSummer?sk=app_111744128907131

Yuri’s Night: http://www.yurisnight.net

Martian Summer:

In the summer of 2008, Andrew Kessler spent three months in mission control of The Phoenix expedition with 130 top NASA scientists and engineers as they sent the first man-made probe to the Martian arctic. For more visit http://www.kessleronmars.com.

“Martian Summer is a candid and precise account of the ups and downs of a space mission. It gives the feel of the pressure and excitement at mission control, showing the human side of science with refreshing honesty.”

–Nilton Renno, Professor of Atmospheric and Space Sciences, University of Michigan

For interviews, press or further information about Martian Summer please contact: Jessica Case, jessica@pegasusbooks.us

Yuri’s Night was a project of the Space Generation Advisory Council from its creation in 2000 until 2010, when the leaders of SGAC and YN agreed that Yuri’s Night would be better served as an independent organization. Yuri’s Night was organized as a corporation in the state of California last fall, and just this week has received official notice of their 501(c)(3) status.

“I’m very happy that Yuri’s Night has finally been recognized as a non-profit organization,” said YN Assistant Director Brice Russ. “This new stage in the history of Yuri’s Night will allow us to grow and better serve fans of space exploration and development around the world.”

Donations to Yuri’s Night can be sent via Paypal to donations@yurisnight.net.

Yuri’s Night, the World Space Party, is celebrated annually on or around April 12th, the anniversary of Gagarin’s historic spaceflight in 1961. This year, not only is it 50 years since Gagarin’s flight, but also the 30th anniversary of the first launch of the U.S. space shuttle Columbia, and the 10th anniversary of Yuri’s Night. Over 340 events are registered at yurisnight.net. Yuri’s Night is supported by many individuals, groups and organizations, including Richard Garriott and the Musk Foundation.

First and foremost, there’s the brand-new Yuri’s Night Live, a media-sharing page that anyone can submit YN pictures, videos or links to simply by emailing submit2@yurisnight.net. People around the world will be sending in images and clips from their local parties, so keep checking back this week for the latest information. On the evening of April 12th–the actual 50th anniversary–Yuri’s Night will be hosting their 2011 Global Webcast in association with Spacevidcast, so if you won’t be at a party that night, make sure to log in, watch the show and chat with the hosts and guests. You’ll also be able to watch footage from other Yuri’s Night events on the video-broadcast website uStream.tv.

If you’re more of a reader, we’ve got you covered as well. Your source for all the latest YN news and updates is, as always, the Yuri’s Night Blog (the one you’re reading now!); if you haven’t already, make sure you’re getting our updates ASAP via our email listserv or RSS feed. Social networking users may also want to visit our Facebook and Twitter pages, where you can interact with other YN fans and receive breaking news.

And if you still haven’t gotten enough Yuri’s Night, we have two final ways to keep you updated. If you’re looking for the latest YN news on your phone, make sure to check out our iPhone application and our mobile site, yn61.mobi. And, for the Second Life users, there will be a YN event occurring at the EDA Kent Island in SciLands on the 12th; visit our Event List page for more details.

Let us know your Yuri’s Night stories (on Facebook, YNLive, or our webcast), and we hope you have a great time at whatever event you choose to attend!