The 11th Roger That! Conference will be held Friday, February 12th 2027 and Saturday, February 13th 2027!  Registration for Roger That! 2027 will open in December 2026 so watch this space! In the meantime, get your space fix with our past conferences!

The first Roger That! was in 2017. Looking at the next Roger That!, coming up in 2027, we can say it's been a voyage! Our keynote speaker will be retired astronaut Linda Godwin, an astronomer as well as the first woman to make two spacewalks in front of two separate space stations, Russia's Mir space station and the International Space Station. Dr. Godwin knows what voyaging is all about. 

2027 also marks the way time travels, with the 70th anniversary of the first artificial satellite, Sputnik, the 60th anniversary of the Apollo 1 disaster, and the 50th anniversary of the launch of the Voyager spacecraft. The Voyagers were a matched pair of intrepid solar system explorers that not only visited our local gas giants but continue, even now, into the depths of outer space. It's also the 50th anniversary of our planet's most complex effort to communicate with the outside universe, the two Voyager Golden Records attached to their respective spacecraft, each full of images of our planet, greetings, the sounds of Earth and amazing music, from Mozart and Stravinsky to a raga by Surshri Kesar Bai Kerkar, rock and roll music by Chuck Berry, and “Naranaratana Kookokoo” (“The Cry Of The Megapode Bird”) by Maniasinimae and Taumaetarau Chieftain Tribe of Oloha and Palasu’u Village Community in the Solomon Islands. These Records hurtle forward, leaving their makers far behind. Perhaps they will be found someday by an alien intelligence who might marvel at their exotic contents and dream of an ancient world.

To commemorate historic voyages, our own voyage through time, and the voyage of Earth's images and sounds through space, the Roger That! 2027 theme is "Voyages." The event starts on Friday, February 12th, with an online academic conference. This year's speakers include:

Alice Bowman - Space Implementation Branch Mission Operations Chief Engineer; New Horizons Mission Operations Manager, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), Laurel, Maryland

Jay Gallentine - Space Historian, Author of Born to Explore: John Casani’s Grand Tour of the Solar System (2025)

Bruce Waggoner - Mission Assurance Manager at NASA JPL/Caltech

Ken Carpenter - Ground System Scientist for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope

Frank White - Space philosopher, consultant, and author of The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution

Matthew Beddingfield - Board Member of the Astronaut Memorial Foundation and Space History Writer

The Friday event moves to GVSU's Pew Campus with a panel on the Voyager Golden Record featuring Jay Gallentine, Glen Swanson and Deana Weibel, workshops for the whole family, a chance to view the 2027 Design That! design challenge entries, and a keynote talk by retired astronaut, Dr. Linda Godwin. 

Saturday, Linda Godwin speaks again at The Grand Rapids Public Museum to lead off a full day of space activities and adventures.