Yuri's Night | The World Space Party – Connecting people with each other, their dreams and spaceship earth.

Now that Yuri’s Night 2012 has wrapped up around the world, we have mentioned some of the most extreme Yuri’s Night parties (like the party at the South Pole) and all of the fabulous news coverage of Yuri’s Night this year – and now we want to celebrate the final count of parties for 2012. We were thrilled when we finally got a party in Africa (our 7th continent for 2012) and were excited again when we bested the number of worldwide parties in 2010 (222 parties).

2012 is now officially the second-largest Yuri’s Night ever. Congrats to Van Nuys, CA on being event #223!

— Yuri’s Night (@YurisNight) April 12, 2012

The count for 2012 has topped out at 236 parties in 51 countries on all 7 continents – our second best year ever! (compared to 567 parties in 75 countries in 2011)

For fun, we collected a few of our favorite Yuri’s Night tweets from this year. Here goes:

Happy Yuri’s Night! 51 years ago a great advance in exploration happened – 1st human in space. And we love exploration! #YurisNight

— X PRIZE Foundation (@xprize) April 12, 2012

Yuri’s Night with George Whitesides of Virgin Galactic. Onward upward! twitter.com/TheScienceGuy/…

— Bill Nye (@TheScienceGuy) April 13, 2012

April 12, 1961: first human in orbit. April 12, 1981: first flight of SpaceShuttle. April 12, 2012: Snooki in 2nd trimester.

— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) April 13, 2012

Got Yuri’s Night plans? We’re having a Tang & astro ice cream social at TG HQ & then partying w/ #yndc12 @ScienceClub: j.mp/ImCcPO

— thinkgeek (@thinkgeek) April 11, 2012

So thank you to all the long-time supporters of Yuri’s Night, especially the avid space geek writers at Huffington Post and Wired.com. Thanks to every person who hosted or attended a party. You help us make this the greatest worldwide space party in human history every year!

Thanks as well to all those people that participated in Yuri’s Night Flashback this year on Yuri’s Night Live. We got some great pictures and video there from 2012 but also some great posts from 2011 all the way back to the first Yuri’s Night party in 2001 at The Hollywood Palace. We will be announcing the winner with the executive board’s favorite flashback picture before the end of May and they will get an awesome Space Songs CD from us. If you want to see the past and present of Yuri’s Night from around the globe, be sure to check out the photos at Yuri’s Night Live – and feel free to add your own to the collection!

So thanks once again for a great Yuri’s Night 2012, make sure you get involved with our partners to continue celebrating space throughout the year, and remember – Yuri’s Night 2013 is only 11 months away!