
An Event
92 Years in the making
CELEBRATE THE ANNIVERSARY OF PLUTO’S DISCOVERY FEB 12–21, 2022
Come show your love for our frosty ninth planet in cold and snowy Flagstaff, Arizona, where it was discovered by Clyde Tombaugh 90 years ago on February 18, 1930.
THE HISTORY OF PLUTO
Learn more about the discovery of this icy body on the edge of our solar system.
Our World Class SpeakersSee all festival speakers on the speakers page

Nicole Stott
Get a chance to meet and hear stories from Nicole; an astronaut, aquanaut, artist, mom, and now author of her first book Back to Earth ~ What Life In Space Taught Me About Our Home Planet – And Our Mission To Protect It. She creatively combines the awe and wonder of her spaceflight experience with her artwork to inspire everyone’s appreciation of our role as crewmates here on Spaceship Earth.
She is a veteran NASA Astronaut with two spaceflights and 104 days as a crewmember on both the International Space Station (ISS) and the Space Shuttle. Personal highlights of her time in space include performing a spacewalk (10th woman to do so), flying the robotic arm to capture the first free-flying HTV, painting a watercolor (now on display at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum), working with her international crew on science that is all about improving life on Earth, and of course the life changing view of our home planet. She is also a NASA Aquanaut. In preparation for spaceflight she was a crew member on an 18-day saturation dive mission at the Aquarius undersea laboratory.
Nicole believes that the international model of peaceful and successful cooperation we have experienced in the extreme environments of space and sea holds the key to the same kind of peaceful and successful cooperation for all of humanity here on Earth.
On her post-NASA mission, Nicole is a co-founder of the Space for Art Foundation — uniting a planetary community of children through the awe and wonder of space exploration and the healing power of art.