50 Years of Human Spaceflight: Yuri's Night Video Contest

By Nancy Atkinson - February 16, 2011 at 2:22 PM UTC | Space Exploration

On April 12, 2011, everyone with the least bit of interest in space should be rockin' the house. It's the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's flight, the first human to launch to space. As of this writing there are 109 Yuri's Night events in 27 countries on 5 continents on 2 worlds (#2 is in Second Life.) Take a look at the

Yuri's Night website

to see if there is an event near you. If not, start your own!

There is also a Yuri's Night 2011 Video Contest, which is an open source competition to engage the public to create tribute videos for this 50th Anniversary of Human Spaceflight. The best videos will be shared at events around the world and the winners will receive $500. The deadline for submission is April 1, 2011. There will be online voting for the winner.

Find out more info about the contest at:

http://videocontest.yurisnight.net/

And get more info about Yuri's Night:

http://yurisnight.net/

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com