Web site Launch | The Planetary Society

As any individual residing on Earth proper right here at first of the 21^st Century, you and I are able to discuss with additional of us than any individuals sooner than us, ever– given that beginning of time. So, welcome planetary surfers from all through our world. Our new website makes it less complicated for you and me to keep up a correspondence, and notably to be able to keep up a correspondence with our rising group of space followers, buddies, colleagues, new acquaintances, and button-wearing Space Geeks®.

As your CEO, I’ve been busy. I was a speaker at TED, the Know-how, Leisure, and Design meeting in Prolonged Seaside, California, at Japanese Missouri State Faculty, on the Faculty of Colorado, and the Nationwide Space Symposium in Colorado Springs. In any case, our species has a landing on Mars, which is growing in a short time. Collectively along with your assist, we’re collaborating inside the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Curiosity mission. The third MarsDialis on board. It’s the check out pattern for the cameras, the photometric calibration aim. And, it’s a sundial, used to level true north and to reckon time by the Photo voltaic— on one different world. For the landing, we’ll have Planetfest® 2012 in Pasadena and at museums and science services all around the world. I hope numerous you learning alongside proper right here will participate. Go to your native planetarium or science center and share the enjoyment of the weekend. We’ll have panels of specialists, reveals, exhibits, and the great, edge-of-your-seat experience of being collectively as Curiosity makes its method by way of the Martian surroundings and lands inside the spectacular Gale Crater.

I hope you could have enjoyable the mission for months and years to return again by collaborating in our EarthDial Mission 2012, which we’ll unveil inside the coming month.

Within the meantime, our two Lightsail® spacecraft are assembled and being examined as we put collectively them for a launch. We’re on a NASA launch manifest, and we’re nonetheless prepared for that journey on a rocket. (If you happen to already know anyone with a rocket sufficiently massive to carry our small 4.5-kilogram payload to an altitude of about 840 kilometers, please contact us instantly.)

Within the case of politics correct now, I paraphrase an outdated curse that goes roughly, “May you reside in thrilling situations.” On this context, it’s not the joyful good type of pleasure. It’s the turmoil we face if the U.S. authorities steers us proper right into a wall, a stop to very important planetary exploration missions. I hope numerous you have bought helped out by sending an electronic mail, or greater however, a paper letter to your representatives in Congress. In case you reside overseas, I hope you’ll take the time to jot down down as correctly. We’ve provided sample messages and letters. The idea is to let the parents, who administration the purse strings of crucial space firm on Earth to assist planetary missions. We’re on the verge of good discoveries, maybe even the invention of once-living, or still-living points on totally different worlds. We’re in a position to’t stop now. There are solely a handful of engineers and scientists, who’ve the expertise to assemble spacecraft which will enter the Martian surroundings, descend, and land safely. If these individuals are compelled to hunt employment elsewhere, we may not at all get that information and ability once more. Let your voice be heard.

As I write, the workers and I are working onerous to rearrange for the USA Science & Engineering Pageant in Washington, DC. It’s a risk for us to showcase the Society and what we do to the world. We hope to recruit some supporters and meet a really perfect many new buddies. In case you’re inside the Washington house, please come by our gross sales house. We’ll be beneath a spherical star self-discipline that features our new model and model of the Lightsail® spacecraft. You’ll meet astronauts, science fiction writers, the workers, and me. We’ll be working to fulfill of us and work together them inside the journey and discovery of space exploration. Within the meantime, click on on spherical our new website; I predict you’ll make only a few discoveries of your private.