Video from NASA's Biggest Party Ever

The Coalition for Space Exploration has uploaded ten minutes of footage from the phenomenal Yuri's Night event held at NASA Ames Research Center on April 13th. Dylan Tweney wrote an article for Wired News about the party. Both of us interviewed the keynote speaker, Anousheh Ansari, the first female space tourist and founder of the Ansari X Prize.

The celebration took place inside a huge hangar and included everything from science demonstrations by NASA employees to trance music, dancing, and lots of psychedelic light displays. Most of the video is made up of interviews, but there are a few good shots of a glowing Buddha statue made by Scott "Gaspo" Gasparian and a girl dancing with glowing hula hoops.

The interviews include George Whitesides and Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides, the couple responsible for transforming the space exploration holiday into a worldwide party and General Pete Worden, the director of NASA Ames.

General Pete Worden summarized the event as follows:

Well, what NASA is all about is expanding human presence into the solar system. It all began with Yuri Gagarin's flight in 1961. This is an opportunity to celebrate not only that accomplishment, but begin to think about the future. And it is particularly important to bring in the next generation and have some fun, but also to think about where we are going to be in the next few decades.