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Northern hosts fifth annual Yuri's Night event

Havre Daily News/Nikki Carlson, file photos

Montana State University-Northern electrical technology professor Spike Magelssen welcomes the audience in the MSU-N gymnasium to the Yuri's Night World Party event in April 2007.

A special night is planned Tuesday at Montana State University-Northern to celebrate a special event: the 50th anniversary of man's first flight into space.

On April 12, 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to fly into outer space in the space capsule Vostok 1.

Trygve "Spike" Magelssen, a Northern professor and organizer of the Havre event, said the special anniversary event will include refreshments, entertainment and special speakers.

"It's just, basically, a celebration of space, " he said. "We, as human beings, have stretched the bounds of earth. The sky is no longer the limit. "

Magelssen, who has been involved in Yuri's Night celebrations since 2005 — when he worked with one of the founders of the event in a Washington, D.C., celebration, said this year's event in Havre will feature a webcast from Northern presented by speakers known world-wide.

"This is the first year we've had national speakers come to the university, " Magelssen said.

"It's going to be going around the world, " he added. "People will be watching it overseas. "

The event will run from 4 p. m. to midnight in the Student Union Building Ballroom at the university. While the event is free, participants can receive a commemorative T-shirt, water bottle and pizza for $5.

The event includes giveaways, a planetarium provided by the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman in which people can look at the stars and constellations, and telescopes set up to view the stars and planets, weather permitting.

Live music will be provided by the Havre classic rock band Blind Luck starting at 8:30 p. m.

Magelssen said the people doing the webcast are well-known in the space community.

One is Dennis Hope, head of Lunar Embassy Corp., who filed an unanswered claim to Earth's moon with the United Nations in 1980. He now has formed his own government, including a ratified constitution, a congress, a unit of currency and has been selling land on the moon.

The United Nations has said it did not need to answer the claim — no one can own the moon.

Hope is scheduled to speak at 7 p. m. in the webcast, presenting "Space Property Rights. "

Steven Durst, editor and publisher of Space Age Publishing Co. and director of the Hawaii-based International Lunar Observatory, will give a presentation about the lunar observatory Stanford University is working on and about space property rights.

Charles Wesley Faires also will attend to discuss his claim of ownership of the three stars comprising Orion's Belt and any planetary systems about them.

Magelssen said he has been working with the presenters — he knows Durst and Faires personally — for nearly a year planning the event.

Numerous groups have helped sponsor the event, including a long list of Havre-area businesses and the Montana Space Grant Consortium, part of NASA's National Space Grant College and Fellowship Program.

Magelssen also will present at the event, with a discussion set for 4 p. m. about the first beings from Earth to be sent into space. Those include Gagarin; American Alan Sheppard who followed him a few weeks later, May 5, 1961, and later on Apollo 14 — "He's the guy who hit the golf ball on the moon; " Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space on June 16, 1963; and Sally Ride, who became the first American woman in space as a crewmember of the space shuttle Challenger June 18, 1983. "If you want to find out what was the first animal in space, you have to come to the presentation, " Magelssen added.

Yuri's Night began April 12, 2001 — the 40th anniversary of Gagarin's flight and the 20th anniversary of the first U. S. space shuttle flight. Since then, it has grown, including parties in cyberspace on the virtual world secondlife.com, and more than 300 events planned on six continents — and two worlds, counting cyberspace, the official website said.

Magelssen said Northern is the only place putting on a Yuri's Night celebration in Montana, so far.

"But this might change things, " he added.

Online: www.yurisnight.net

 

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