https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Planetary_Society#History
I am a member of The Planetary Society and thought I’d share information about it to help broaden the horizons of humanity. The reason I joined The Planetary Society, is to also broaden my own horizons.
We can get so distracted by both our individual dramas and what is going on in each country on this one world we all live on. Being part of something much bigger than ourselves helps to put all problems in their proper perspective, at least for me.
I am part of this amazing group of human beings including Buzz Aldrin, who is a former American astronaut, engineer, and fighter pilot. He made three spacewalks as pilot of the 1966 Gemini 12 mission and was the Lunar Module Eagle pilot on the 1969 Appolo 11 mission. He was the second person to walk on the moon after mission commander Neil Armstrong. Following the deaths of Armstrong in 2012 and pilot Michael Collins in 2021, he is the last surviving Appolo 11 crew member. Following Jim Lovell’s death this year, Aldrin became the oldest living astronaut.
I particularly like the mission of The Planetary Society to search for near-Earth objects than could endanger the Earth. It is good that someone is watching out for survival of the Earth as a whole.
When I joined The Planetary Society, I received this T-shirt. The planets, stars and satellites listed on this T-shit include: The Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, the Moon, Mars, Ceres, Jupiter, IO, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, Saturn, Enceladus, Titan, Uranus, Neptune, Triton, Pluto, and of course, a circle for the Unexplored.
What is the mission of The Planetary Society?
There is such a wealth of information from Wikipedia that I opted to share the following information from there.
The Planetary Society is an American internationally active non-governmental nonprofit organization. It is involved in research, public outreach, and political space advocacy for engineering projects related to astronomy, planetary science, and space exploration. It was founded in 1980 by Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray, and Louis Friedman, and has about 60,000 members from more than 100 countries around the world.
The Society is dedicated to the exploration of the Solar System, the search for near-Earth objects, and the search for extraterrestrial life. The society’s mission is stated as: “Empowering the world’s citizens to advance space science and exploration.”
The Planetary Society is a strong advocate for space funding and missions of exploration within NASA. They lobby Congress and engage their membership in the United States to write and call their representatives in support of NASA funding.
In addition to public outreach, The Planetary Society has sponsored solar sail and microorganisms-in-space projects to foster space exploration. In June 2005, the Society launched the COSMOS 1 craft to test the feasibility of solar sailing, but the rocket failed shortly after liftoff. LightSail was originally conceived as a series of three solar sail experiments but later shortened to two missions. LightSail 1 launched on May 20, 2015, and demonstrated a test deployment of its solar sail on June 7, 2015. Light Sail 2 launched on June 25, 2019, and successfully used sunlight to change its orbit.
Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment (LIFE) was a two-part program designed to test the ability of microorganisms to survive in space. The first phase flew on STS-134, Space Shuttle Endeavor‘s final flight in 2011. The second phase rode on Russia’s Fobos-Grunt mission, which attempted to go to Mars’ moon Phobos and back but failed to escape Earth orbit.
The Planetary Society was founded in 1980 by Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray, and Louis Friedman as a champion of public support of space exploration and the search for extraterrestrial life. Until the death of Carl Sagan in 1996, the Society was led by Sagan, who used his celebrity and political clout to influence the political climate of the time, including protecting SETI in 1981 from congressional cancellation. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the Society pushed its scientific and technologic agenda, which led to an increased interest in rover-based planetary exploration and NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto.
In addition to its political affairs the Society has created a number of space related projects and programs. The SETI program began with Paul Horowitz ‘s Suitcase SETI and has grown to encompass searches in radio and optical wavelengths from the northern and southern hemispheres of the Earth. SETI@home, the largest distributed computing experiment on Earth, is perhaps the Society’s best-known SETI project. Other projects include the development of the Mars Microphone instrument which flew on the failed Mars Polar Lander project, as well as two LightSail projects, solar sail technology demonstrators designed to determine whether space travel is possible by using only sunlight.
If you would also like to join The Planetary Society, check this out: https://www.planetary.org/membership
“You are a Spark of Limitless Living Light,” as I say in my last four books. https://lindahourihanhhcp.com.