It’s been fifty-two years.  No, not of Mach 30 (well, not yet anyway)…  It’s been fifty-two years since the first human spaceflight.  And for the last twelve years people around the world have celebrated the anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s first flight (and the first US Space Shuttle flight) with Yuri’s Night parties.

Starting last year, with a great deal of encouragement and support from our volunteers, Mach 30 celebrated Yuri’s Night with an online party.  Each year, we choose a theme and hold a space trivia contest, complete with prizes for our guests out in cyberspace.  As a distributed organization we find the online format gives our volunteers, partners, board members, and fans a chance to celebrate human spaceflight together without the need for a transporter.

We just held our 2013 party this weekend.  Check it out in the video above.  The theme was Rocket Science: Live!  During the party we demonstrated two of our open source spaceflight projects (the Shepard Test Stand and our first ground station prototype).  Both were a big hit with our guests including makers from Bucketworks and Club Cyberia, and students from John Mall High School.

From all of us at Mach 30, I want to thank our volunteers, guests, and partners who helped make this year’s party a huge success.  We had a blast!  And we can’t wait to celebrate fifty-three years!

ad astra per civitatem