2022 is the year of space for Armenia, as the country is preparing to host the science festival “STARMUS VI. 50 years on Mars" in September, vice speaker of the Armenian parliament, co-chair of the festival Hakob Arshakyan said Tuesday, July 19.

He announced that the festival will be attended by:

Charles Bolden Jr, former NASA Administrator and a former astronaut, who flew on four Space Shuttle missions;

Charles Duke, a former astronaut who, as a lunar module pilot of Apollo 16 in 1972, became the tenth and youngest person to walk on the Moon, at age 36 years and 201 days;

Tony Fadell, an American engineer who is the co-creator of the iPod and the iPhone, and founder and former CEO of Nest Labs;

Jim Bagian, a physician, engineer, and former NASA astronaut of Armenian descent;

Kip Thorne, an American theoretical physicist who was awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics along with Rainer Weiss and Barry C. Barish "for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves";