Shaunna C. serving up sweets to our many supporters!
Saturday, June 9th at La Canada High Schoool was a day of JPL fans, planetary science supporters, and cookies. That’s right, I said cookies!
The roads were packed, the sun was beating down on us, but the volunteers from Society for Planetary Defense, CalTech, & UCLA still came…
Our mission was to raise awareness of the 20% cut to NASA’s Planetary Exploration budget beginning October 1st; with the support and efforts of CalTech & UCLA, we had a really great turn out! We are still counting signatures, but we’re estimating 2500 letters signed; each one will be sent individually to each elected official to make an impact and let them know that it is unacceptable to place successful planetary science programs on the back burner – that we need to continue to inspire, continue to dream, and never stop looking up into the sky and searching for the unknown.
So many supporters show their love for NASA!
Going out on a limb here, but I am going to say that we had a great turn out because we offered some tasty baked goods! It just so happens that our Managing Director has a bakery , The Sweet Chemist, and was happy to donate her wicked awesome baking services for a good cause. We had a wide selection of space themed treats, from NEOdoodles (Snickerdoodles) to Red Planet Cupcakes (Red Velvet Cupcakes), that all went pretty fast. I mean, come on, who can resist free cookies in exchange for a few letters signed?
Delicious & Adorable Meteor Chip Cookies!
Delicious treats were only part of the deal, thanks to our UCLA counterpart (Michaela Shopland) we had some groovy live entertainment! Not only was there rockin’ music, we had a ‘Rover’ for kids to drive around and a really neat Astronaut cut-out for the perfect photo-op! A really special thanks to Jennifer Buz, from CalTech, for making a great effort into getting lots of volunteer help. On that note, thank you to the many volunteers that came out to support and help the effort!
Young supporter, future scientist, or young astronaut?
I have to give a shout out Stefanie at StampedMedia for all of her amazing efforts to get this event noticed and covered. She was there to live-tweet the event and give the public a play-by-play on the days events. Another very large shout out to Alan Stern for organizing this entire national movement. We’re so glad we got to participate in such an amazing event!
One last shout out to the Planetary Society for having one of their great volunteers come out to show their support for NASA and promote their upcoming Planetfest event, also a great big thank you to Planetary Radio’s Mat Kaplan for covering the event.
We’re all so thankful for your support and strongly believe that we can make a difference if we stand united, and we think that this event is solid proof of what many individual’s efforts can accomplish together. So again, thank you all.
