12.Yuri’s Night Dancing Snoopy Medal
2022. Presented to Adryon Kozel during fieldwork by Loretta Whitesides.
Part of the series of fieldwork memorabilia begun in #11, this medal holds a special place in my heart. It was presented to me in L.A. in May 2022 in a ceremony at a thank you gathering for the core organising team, held a few weeks after Yuri’s Night. Yuri’s Night, a non-profit ‘world space party’, is held every year in April near the anniversary of the first human spaceflight, by Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin in 1961, and celebrates “the power of space to bring the world together”.
The Dancing Snoopy is inspired by the Silver Snoopy Award, given by NASA astronauts to employees for outstanding achievements since 1968. The Silver Snoopy is a sterling silver lapel pin which has flown to space and is considered one of the highest and rarest honours in NASA. From November 16 to December 11, 2022, an astronaut Snoopy flew to the Moon and back as the zero-gravity indicator (see #22 for another zero-g indicator) on the Artemis-1 mission.