Posted: October 30, 2015, 11:00am
This past Saturday night, I SAW TWO OF MY HEROES LIVE – Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson. I still can’t believe it happened. Bill Nye, the CEO of The Planetary Society, hosted ‘More to Explore’ as a part of their 35thanniversary celebration. Co-founded by Carl Sagan, one of the first people to make science and new discoveries accessible to the public, The Planetary Society is currently the largest public (non-government sponsored) space organization “on Earth”. Their main goal is to inspire, involve and empower the public in space exploration. To do so, they conduct various projects and are firm advocates for strong STEM education in the pubic school system.
Although I’m not directly in the astronautical or aerospace fields, I am still fascinated by space and thoroughly enjoyed learning more about NASA’s plan to populate Mars and JPL’s strategies to divert asteroids that threaten Earth. With all of the recent news about the discovery of water on Mars and the release of the blockbuster film, The Martian, public interest is growing rapidly in this field! I hope that this excitement builds enough for the government to provide more funding for these amazing NASA/JPL missions and goals.
At the More to Explore event at the Pasadena Civic Center, Bill Nye interacted with a number of special guests in addition to Neil deGrasse Tyson. Actors from Star Trek and Star Trek Voyager made appearances, as did the author of The Martian, leaders of NASA and JPL, and other board members of The Planetary Society. All of them contributed to explanations of how far we’ve come as a society in advancing science, as well as where we’re currently headed in the area of space exploration. Did you know that the first astronauts that will land on Mars are currently in Kindergarten? There is so much to look forward to in this field – hopefully leaders like Bill Nye will continue to inspire younger generations to pursue careers in science and engineering!
Published on July 27th, 2017
Last updated on August 10th, 2017