Ron Garan Receives 2011 Spirit of Yuri’s Night Award

NASA Astronaut Ron Garan was officially presented with the 2011 Spirit of Yuri’s Night Award on Wednesday, March 14, 2012, after a day of special events welcoming him back to his childhood home of Yonkers, NY.

“This is a great honor, and especially personal for me since I traveled to the International Space Station in a Soyuz spacecraft dubbed “Gagarin”, launched from the same launch pad that Yuri Gagarin launched from more than 50 years ago,” said Garan.

The Spirit of Yuri’s Night Award is the highest honor that can be given by the Yuri’s Night Executive Team. Awarded once each year, the Spirit of Yuri’s Night Award recognizes “a person or persons that embody the Yuri’s Night mission of using space and art to contribute to the future of humanity, both in space and on Earth.” The first annual Spirit of Yuri’s Night award was given in 2010 to private space adventurer Richard Garriott.

The 2011 Spirit of Yuri’s Night Award, designed and generously donated by Shasta Visions, is an Aqua Crystal Globe with detailed geographic features, representative of Garan’s time in orbit and his efforts to protect the planet Earth, on top of a translucent base with inscriptions of Garan’s name and the Yuri’s Night logo.

The award was presented to Garan by Yuri’s Night Global Team member David Parmet at “A New York Evening With NASA Astronaut Ron Garan,” a free public talk held on the campus of Iona College hosted by the Westchester Amateur Astronomers and the Iona Physics Department.

The recipient of the 2012 Spirit of Yuri’s Night Award will be announced this spring.

About Yuri’s Night

Yuri’s Night is a global non-profit organization dedicated to hosting celebrations of humanity’s past, present and future in space on or around each April 12 in commemoration of Yuri Gagarin’s first manned space flight and the inaugural launch of the Space Shuttle. In 2011, Yuri’s Night celebrated the 50th anniversary of human spaceflight with 567 events in 75 countries on all seven continents, the International Space Station, and the Second Life virtual world, including events in Tokyo, New York City, Moscow and the NASA Ames Research Center.

For more information about Yuri’s Night, visit www.yurisnight.net.