Yuri’s Night Was Out of This World

On Saturday, April 10,2010, I made my way to Yuri’s Night, a celebration of the Yuri Gargarin’s first flight into space, hosted by NASA. This event, an annual tradition, is held to promote space exploration as well as to inspire people about what NASA is going to do in the future. There were presentations by local research companies as well as science-inspired art on display. But I found the people who attended the event to be the most fascinating. A good portion of the people at the event was dressed up in costumes that didn’t seem to resemble anything. I was surprised by the peculiar costumes people were wearing and later discovered from talking to a few of them that the costumes just represent science’s potential to discover something novel in space. In addition to being very educational, Yuri’s Night also had an epic music show, put on by many famous artists there such as Common, N.E.R.D, Les Claypool, DJ Q-Bert, as well as The Black Keys. But perhaps the most entertaining show was held at the other stage where they featured underground electron DJ’s and hundreds of people dancing in costumes. Overall, Yuri’s night was a great event allowing everyone to celebrate how far science has come and how far it still has to go.