World Space Week and farewell to Swift

**Sarah Al-Ahmed** (0:03)
The largest space event on Earth and saying goodbye to the Swift Space Telescope. This week on Planetary Radio.
I'm Sarah Al-Ahmed of the Planetary Society, with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond. Every October, people in over 100 countries come together to celebrate space during UN-declared World Space Week. Dennis Stone, president and co-founder of the World Space Week Association, joins us to talk about how a volunteer effort that started in Houston 45 years ago grew into a global celebration and how you can get involved this October. Then Planetary Society Science Editor Asa Stahl is here to walk us through the final chapter of the Swift Space Telescope. After 21 years of groundbreaking discoveries, Swift is sadly falling out of orbit and the ambitious rescue mission that was meant to save it didn't go as planned. Later, our Chief Scientist Bruce Betts marks the 100th anniversary of the rocket that started it all in this week's What's Up. If you love Planetary Radio and want to stand formed about the latest space discoveries, make sure you hit that subscribe button on your favorite podcasting platform. By subscribing, you'll never miss an episode filled with new and awe-inspiring ways to know the cosmos and our place within it.
World Space Week is coming up October 4th through the 10th, and this year's theme is Rocket Revolution. I sat down with Dennis Stone, President and Co-Founder of the World Space Week Association. Dennis spent 38 years at NASA's Johnson Space Center. He helped lead the Commercial Orbit Transportation Services, or COTS program. That's the investment that funded early SpaceX and orbital science cargo missions to the International Space Station. He also served as the Project Executive in NASA's Commercial Low Earth Orbit Development Program and spent time as VP of Business Development at VAST, the Commercial Space Station Company. He's been building World Space Week as a volunteer alongside all of that. We talk about how it all started, where it's going next, and why space is still one of the best tools we have for inspiring the next generation.
Hi, Dennis. Thanks for joining us.

**Dennis Stone** (2:21)
Hi, Sarah. Thanks for having me.

**Sarah Al-Ahmed** (2:23)
I always look forward to World Space Week, but for people who may have heard of this and never participated, what is World Space Week?

**Dennis Stone** (2:31)
So World Space Week is the biggest space event on Earth. It was declared by the United Nations in 1999
There was something that we were organizing called Space Week before that, but it became an official UN celebration then, and World Space Week has been growing rapidly. And is now in over 100 countries each October 4th through 10th.

**Sarah Al-Ahmed** (2:58)
The dates of World Space Week were chosen very intentionally, October 4th through October 10th. Why those dates specifically?

**Dennis Stone** (3:09)
Yeah, so the UN Outer Space Committee, I've attended many other meetings, is a very diplomatic body with ambassadors and they're all very careful. And so at UNISPACE 3, which was a major meeting of the space world in Vienna in 1999, they had massive debates and negotiations and, you know, smoke-filled rooms and all the things you could ever imagine. So what they agreed, turned out October 4th was the date the first satellite ever left Earth, you know, Sputnik.
And October 10th, a date I kind of half-jokingly state only a space lawyer truly appreciates, is when the first ever Outer Space Treaty went into force, I think like about 10 years later. But so it made a nice sandwich of a week. And so this was something they all agreed to, October 4th through 10th. We were actually celebrating the Apollo 11 anniversary, and then we moved it into the school year because we were missing the kids. And then quickly, we, when the Space Week organization that I also was part of heard about the UN declaring World Space Week, we said, hey, let's just go offer to help and you know, move everything to their dates. And they said, sure, you can be our NGO partner. And the rest is history. So for 27 years now, we've been supporting the United Nations Office of Outer Space Affairs and the global coordination and trying to get more people involved and supporting them and reporting on what happens.

**Sarah Al-Ahmed** (4:41)
And there's a long history to this. And you've been here for the whole thing. You co-founded what eventually became this World Space Week Association in 1981, I want to say 45 years ago.

**Dennis Stone** (4:52)
Yeah, yeah, I was involved.
So I was just a young little whippersnapper here in Houston. I was at an AIAA meeting.