"Keep looking up."

"How cool is that!?"

Bill Nye, CEO of The Planetary Society

I've been a member of the Planetary Society for almost five years now.  I make a modest monthly contribution, I own a couple of themed t-shirts, and I receive the weekly Downlink update in my IN box every Friday, but to be honest, I haven't really felt connected.  To be fair, that's my fault - there are occasionally local activities that I could attend, but I'm a bit too introverted to feel comfortable with that sort of thing. 

However, in one of those odd silver-lining pandemic moments, tonight I had the pleasure of sitting in on the Planetary Society 2020 Impact Report meeting.  Under normal circumstances, that would have required a plane ticket and a hotel stay, but, as with the Game of Thrones FX session that I attended last March, this time it was bare feet and a comfortable chair in my spare bedroom.

In attendance at the e-meeting were Chief Operating Officer Jennifer Vaughn, Chief Advocate Casey Dreier, Chief Scientist Bruce Betts, Planetary Radio podcast host Mat Kaplan, Chief Executive Officer Bill Nye, and newly elected* Society President and Professor of Planetary Science at Caltech, Bethany Ehlmann. 

As always, Bill Nye was an exuberant and energetic presence, but the new President was impressively excited and pasionate as well, and her position at Caltech gives her an unexpected sort of Big Bang Theory street cred - it's not hard to imagine her doing a cameo if the show was still in production.

The session had a sort of cheerfully casual feeling to it - the new president seemed to have set up her laptop in the corner of her living room. and dogs barked in the background while Chief Scientist Bruce Betts discussed some of the Society's accomplishments in 2020. 

I'm impressed by the manner in which the Planetary Society is spending my modest monthly contribution (and the contributions of over 50,000 other members around the world).  

The mission of the Planetary Society is to "empower the world’s citizens to advance space science and exploration".  This goal is accomplished through a combination of education, advocacy, collaboration and invention.  The Society's crowdfunded Lightsail 2 spacecraft is a primary example:  as its name suggests, it's a proof of concept orbiter that relies on photonic energy for propulsion - more poetically, it flies on the wind from the Sun.  Lightsail 2 successfully celebrated a year in orbit in June, and is now on an extended mission to provide more data on the practical aspects of solar sailing technology.   

The Society also provided seed money for projects like the PlanetVac, an elegantly simple low-cost sampling technology designed to be mounted on exploratory spacecraft.  The system uses a blast of compressed gas to blow material from the surface into a collecting cylinder mounted on the ship's landing leg.

Other projects funded by the Society are the "100 Planets" exoplanet search, and the Shoemaker Near Earth Object Grant, which funds advanced amateur astronomers* in searching for previously undiscovered asteroids and plotting their courses to determine if there's a possibility of an impact with Earth.

The Society also advanced its overall goal of being influential, of speaking on behalf of science and space exploration in the areas of government advocacy and policy, conducting more than 300 phone and web meetings with NASA, Congress, the Pentagon, and international space agencies over the course of 2020.  On the public front, it expanded its mission of inspiring and informing through an expanded website offering, the weekly Downlink newsletter, and virtual events like this one.

I'm pleased to be a member of the Planetary Society - as Bill Nye commented, we have to keep looking up, and it's obvious that the Society is dedicated to advancing and supporting the exploration of space in a way that would make founder Carl Sagan proud.

However, I have one critical comment - not necessarily a complaint, let's say a question of suitable accessories.  Bill, seriously, you need a more appropriate coffee cup for on-screen appearances - based on the logo on the bottom, it was a London Underground souvenir, and really, something more, I don't know, cosmic would seem to be in order.  My NASA mug was a birthday gift from the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York, but you're much much better connected than I am - I bet NASA would just give you one.

- Sid

* The new president wryly observed that the Society had "witnessed a peaceful transition of power with a free and fair election."  Yes, she's looking at you, Donald.

**It's made clear that the people involved are "amateurs" in the same sense that Olympic competitors are.