The Planetary Society

The Planetary Society

Formation	1980; 44 years ago (1980)
Type	Non-governmental and nonprofit foundation, 501(c)(3)
Tax ID no.	95-3423566
Registration no.	C0946337
Location	Pasadena, California, US
Fields	Space advocacy
Members	60,000
Key people	Louis Friedman, Bill Nye, Neil deGrasse Tyson
Website	planetary.org

The Planetary Society is an American internationally-active non-governmental nonprofit organization.^[1] It is involved in research, public outreach, and political space advocacy for engineering projects related to astronomy, planetary science, and space exploration. It was founded in 1980 by Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray, and Louis Friedman,^[2] and has about 60,000 members from more than 100 countries around the world.^[3]

The Society is dedicated to the exploration of the Solar System, the search for near-Earth objects, and the search for extraterrestrial life.^[4] The society's mission is stated as: "Empowering the world’s citizens to advance space science and exploration."^[5] The Planetary Society is a strong advocate for space funding and missions of exploration within NASA. They lobby Congress and engage their membership in the United States to write and call their representatives in support of NASA funding.^[5]

In addition to public outreach, The Planetary Society has sponsored solar sail and microorganisms-in-space projects to foster space exploration. In June 2005, the Society launched the Cosmos 1 craft to test the feasibility of solar sailing, but the rocket failed shortly after liftoff.^[6][7] LightSail was originally conceived as a series of three solar sail experiments^[8] but later shortened to two missions. LightSail 1 launched on May 20, 2015,^[9] and demonstrated a test deployment of its solar sail on June 7, 2015.^[10] LightSail 2 launched on June 25, 2019,^[11] and successfully used sunlight to change its orbit.^[12]

Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment (LIFE), was a two-part program designed to test the ability of microorganisms to survive in space.^[13] The first phase flew on STS-134, Space Shuttle Endeavour's final flight in 2011.^[14] The second phase rode on Russia's Fobos-Grunt mission, which attempted to go to Mars' moon Phobos and back but failed to escape Earth orbit.^[15]