Bringing The Planetary Society together
Over 800 members joined us in watching a once-in-a-lifetime total solar eclipse at our Eclipse-O-Rama event in Fredericksburg, Texas. The two-day festival featured stargazing, talks by professional astronomers, a meet and greet with Bill Nye, and plenty of games and food. Everyone had a blast making memories together, as a space community.
In 2021, we organized a two-day virtual festival to celebrate the arrival of three different spacecraft to the planet Mars. People from around the world joined Planetfest ‘21, including JPL chief engineer Rob Manning, author Andy Weir, astronaut Jessica Watkins, and Star Trek actor Kate Mulgrew.
Finally, in 2025, we celebrated our 45-year anniversary with the Cosmic Shores Gala aboard the iconic Queen Mary. Tickets were sold out, and everyone from NASA leaders and Star Trek actors to charter members were there.
The Planetary Society took the opportunity to look back on our rich history of accomplishments, bringing our community together around the collective passion for exploration we all share. We celebrated our advocacy campaigns, our far-reaching audience, our successful space missions, and our impressive campaign to raise $40 million in five years.
We also looked to the future. Many at the gala spoke about the crisis now facing space science and exploration, drawing a parallel between the political environment in which the Society was founded and that prevailing in 2025. But not everything has remained the same. While our grassroots movement is fueled by the same collective passion, we are more capable than ever before — and that is thanks, in part, to the Space for Everyone framework.