With space exploration no longer being monopolized by scientists and government agencies, artists are now getting in on the act. Why not launch a satellite with poetry as payload or a rocket made of sugarcane? These examples of taking artistic expression beyond the grip of gravity are part of a broader citizen science movement revolutionizing our relationship to technological progress and exploration.

Join Future Tense at 6 p.m. on Oct. 26 in Washington, D.C., for a happy hour conversation with Juan José Diaz Infante, who launched the poetry-bearing Ulises I Mexican nanosatellite; Tavares Strachan, a multidisciplinary contemporary artist who has trained in the Russian cosmonaut program; and moderator Eric Molinsky of the Panoply podcast Imaginary Worlds.* They’ll be discussing the desirability of connecting (quite literally!) the arts and sciences.

For more information and to RSVP, visit the New America website.

*Correction, Oct. 19, 2017: This post originally misidentified Imaginary Worlds as a WNYC podcast. It is a Panoply podcast.