Space Lovers Party Like It's 1961

April 13, 2008 — -- Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides' fascination with space started when she was a little girl who played "star ship" under the stairs. Next, it was reading books about the universe and space. Today, she may not pretend to travel to space or read picture books about the universe, but she's never lost her love of that place beyond the atmosphere of Earth.

Whiteside's interest led her to start Yuri's Night, a global celebration of the first human to go to space.

The annual event is named after Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who traveled to space on April 12, 1961. Another reason to celebrate is that April 12, 1981 was also the launch date of Columbia, the first U.S. space shuttle.

The first Yuri's Night was in 2001, with 79 events in 29 countries. In its eighth year, 200 cities hosted the space parties.

"I'm passionate about space because it seems like something that could really bring the whole planet together," said Whitesides, Yuri's executive director and a blogger for Wired. "Going away from home sometimes you learn to appreciate it for the first time. I think the same thing will happen when we go out in space: We'll really get an appreciation for things like air, water -- things we take for granted."

More than 500 people attended Yuri's Night at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. It was the first time the event was held at the location.

The party featured a mock space shuttle, a live steampunk band named The Cassettes and even hip-hop beats spun by Mark Branch, a NASA aerospace engineer who by night goes by the name "DJ Scientific."

"We do a lot for kids, we do a lot all the way through university," said Carmel Conaty, Goddard Space Flight Center manager. "We don't do anything beyond that so I wanted to do [Yuri's Night]."

Yuri's Night is aimed at young adults or Generation Y, a group that Whitesides said is not nearly as into space exploration as she is.

"Yuri's Night is about getting Generation Y excited about space exploration," said Teresita Smith, a NASA public affairs intern. "I'm only 23. I was not even born when the first man walked on the moon. Before I started working at NASA, I knew nothing about space. I talked to my parents and they can tell me everything. And when they talk about it, they're so excited."