If you go What: Planetary Shoe-Shine When: 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday Where: First United Methodist Church, 1421 Spruce St., Boulder Cost: Donations Info: bit.ly/IxQlnG

Some of Boulder’s biggest brains will be on the Pearl Street Mall this weekend — shining shoes.

Local gurus of the cosmos will join their astro-brethren across the country on Saturday for the “Planetary Car Wash & Bake Sale,” an event organized by Alan Stern, associate vice president of the Southwest Research Institute’s Space Science and Engineering Division in Boulder, to call attention to the deep budget cuts being proposed for NASA’s planetary science program.

President Barack Obama’s proposed 2013 budget calls for cutting the program by $309 million, a decrease of more than 20 percent. The proposed cuts have spurred planetary scientists into action — writing letters and testifying before Congress — but Stern wanted to get the word out to the general public in a way they’d remember.

“I was looking for something that was different from what we normally do; I wanted it to be fun but attention-getting,” Stern said. “The idea of all these Ph.D.s in all these locations around the country, and graduate students, out there doing things for the public just to get the message out, it gives the right impression.

Researchers in Arizona, Texas, California, Utah, Florida, Maryland, Nevada, Georgia and Pennsylvania all plan to spend their Saturday mornings washing cars and selling baked goods for a nominal fee. The idea, Stern said, is less about actually raising money than about raising awareness.

In Boulder, Stern looked into washing cars and selling homemade treats, but he was stymied on both accounts by local regulations. There are environmental rules that apply to suds getting washed into storm drains and vendor permits that apply to selling baked goods. In fact, even giving away homemade treats on the Pearl Street Mall requires a visit from a health inspector, Stern said.

So Stern chose the next-best thing: shoe shining. (Although he acknowledges that the number of Birkenstock-wearing mall visitors in Boulder may somewhat flummox even that plan.)

The actual shoe-shining operation will be set up a block off of Pearl Street outside the First United Methodist Church, 1421 Spruce St.

But local scientists and graduate students, including folks from the University of Colorado, SwRI and Ball Aerospace, will also man a booth on the mall, directing those with dull-looking shoes — or an interest in chatting about the wonders of the universe with planetary experts — over to the church.

Obama’s proposed budget cuts made headlines earlier this spring, largely because of the anticipated impacts to NASA’s plans to further explore Mars. NASA has already backed away from a partnership with the European Space Agency to launch the Mars Trace Gas Orbiter in 2016 and the ExoMars rover in 2018.

NASA’s Curiosity rover is already en route to the red planet. And NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission, or MAVEN — which is being spearheaded by CU — is still on track to launch next year. But scientists say the proposed cuts will diminish NASA’s capacity to build on that momentum.

And while the threat to NASA’s Mars ambitions is real, Stern — the principal investigator on New Horizons NASA’s mission to Pluto — says that cuts to the planetary sciences program will be felt beyond Mars, impacting our ability to learn more about the other planets in our solar system.

This weighs on the mind of Kier Fortier, a member of the CU chapter of Students for the Exploration and Space who plans to participate in Saturday’s planetary shoe shine.

“It worries me that the proposed planetary sciences funding is cut so much,” said Fortier, a junior in aerospace engineering who wants to work on programs that put humans into space after graduation, and, maybe, head into space himself, in an email. “This would lead to the cancellation and reduction of many programs. This would seriously reduce the amount of science that we get back for the money already invested by taxpayers.”

Fortier said he hopes that showing up Saturday will help demonstrate how important the funding issues are to him and his fellow students.

“I hope that when people see all of us shining shoes and essentially groveling on the street that they will see how much we care,” he said. “Also, we will have letters written to members of congress that people can sign and mail. There are a bunch of similar events happening all across the country, and I think that is something that Congress cannot ignore.”

Contact Camera Staff Writer Laura Snider at 303-473-1327 or sniderl@dailycamera.com.