Minutes of ARISS International Monthly Meeting
Go To Meeting/Teleconference
January 18, 2022 – 1200 UTC
Participants:
Oliver Amend
Frank Bauer
Gaston Bertels
Shizuo Endo
Darin Cowan
Emanuele D’Andria
Stefan Dombrowski
Ana Guzman
David Jordan
Glenn MacDonell
Will Marchant
Lou McFadin
Ciaran Morgan
Martha Muir
Eric Oosterbaan
Jan Poppeliers
Kenneth Ransom
Sergey Samburov
Marty Schulman
Dave Taylor
Rosalie White
Satoshi Yasuda
Interpreter: Gregory Khasin
Unable to attend:
Fabio Azzarello
Kerry Banke
Armand Budzianowski
Francesco De Paolis
Martine Diggins
Gianpietro Ferrario
Bruce Hunter
Bertus Husken
Tony Hutchison
Micol Ivancic
Peter Kofler
Keigo Komuro
Chet Latawiec
Michel Nawrocki
Ken Nichols
Gordon Scannell
Graham Shirville
Mark Steiner
Masanobu Tsuji
Meeting Agenda
Roll Call—Martha took attendance by using the names shown on the GoTo Meeting screen.
Welcome—Frank Bauer, KA3HDO
Frank welcomed everyone to the meeting and wished everyone “Happy New Year.” He continued by saying that November marked the 25th anniversary of the existence of the ARISS team. December marked the 21st anniversary of continuous ARISS school contacts.
This year, Sergey will be launching 10 satellites. We anticipate 1 or 2 Axiom flights. Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti should be back onboard the ISS making contacts. HAM TV is ready to ship to Houston with hopes of having it back on the ISS by the end of the year. The ARISS *STAR* program has been fully funded for one year. We expect additional SSTV events in the future. In other words, 2022 should be an exciting year!
For the ARISS-International Monthly Meeting on December 21, 2021, Martha recorded the minutes and distributed the file to ARISS Delegates prior to this ARISS-I meeting. Darin made a motion to accept the minutes. Ciaran seconded that motion. The minutes was adopted without dissent and will be sent to Carol Jackson to be posted on the ARISS-I webpage.
Sergey thanked the many folks involved in this event and said that the event shows how unified we are as a team. He thanked the US team for organizing and sending him the great images. He also thanked Frank for his great logistical planning. With that, everyone received what was needed on time.
Sergey’s team is planning to launch 10 micro-satellites this year. He is hoping Samantha Cristoforetti will get involved in this. The first six satellites are presently being loaded on a Progress vehicle with hopes they will be on the ISS by some point in February. Eventually, the satellites will be deployed outside the ISS. It is hoped that hams around the world can get involved in the testing of those satellites sometime in July or August. By the end of the year, they will be testing a low bandwidth TV system that will allow high school students in Russia to send images to the ISS.
Frank thanked Sergey for all his efforts and for letting us know what is on the horizon. He asked Sergey to let us know the frequencies that will be used to for the testing of the satellites so that we can get that information out to the Amateur Radio community.
Will Marchant presented the SSTV Image Gallery report. He said that this SSTV event, which ran from December 26 to December 31, was the second most popular SSTV event (behind the 20th anniversary event), He thanked Sergey for making sure the images got up to the ISS in a useable format and Marty for preparing the slide deck. He also thanked the review team that chose “best of” images from the 16,000 images sent in to the gallery. Images were sent in from every continent except Antarctica. About half of the images came in from Europe. There were about 8,000 unique visitors to the website. They visited the site about 12,000 times. 276 pre-college students and 348 pre-college teachers and 310 college students and 685 college educators visited the site.
Sergey chimed in to thank Armand and Slavic for preparing the diplomas for this event.
Oliver presented Armand’s report. Oliver began by thanking Armand and Slavic for developing the diplomas. This was a very successful event. More than 3900 diplomas have been claimed. The majority of those went to hams, some to students using Software Defined Radio dongles and some were not identified.
The signals were good and strong. A lot of handheld radios were used. Some phone apps were used, too.
Oliver shared an interesting report from Armand about a ham in South Africa. That man said that “his five year old son is very excited to get these images.”
On Armand’s behalf, Oliver thanked everyone who contributed images to this project.
Marty supported SSTV image development. He said that his use of an Apple computer made the images in a different file format (JPEG vs JPG) than what the cosmonauts could use with the on-board SSTV software. This caused some initial problems that were quickly corrected by the cosmonauts. Marty said that he created a document to use in future SSTV events that should help new SSTV team members to quickly support the SSTV project. He said it will eventually be available on the ARISS website.
Oliver began his report by saying that the diplomas for these events are very popular. Unfortunately, there are about 15 awards popping up that are not from ARISS. Some of these non-ARISS approved awards are using the ARISS logo. These include one from a Turkish club and another from Indonesia. These unofficial awards are causing confusion. Only the PZK award and the Russian award are the “official” ARISS awards. Oliver asked the team for their advice on a forward action. Stefan suggested we allow it but control it. Have groups register with us to use the logo. Sergey asked if the ARISS logo has a copyright. Frank said no, it doesn’t but it does require permission from ARISS to use. Perhaps we need to set up a permission system set up in advance of future SSTV events. Oliver and Shizuo said that they had tried to contact the groups improperly using the logo. So far they had failed to get a response from them. Glenn suggested we add to the diplomas something like “these are the official diplomas” or “approved by ARISS.” Dave Taylor suggested that identify the ARISS SSTV Gallery and the PZK diploma site as ARISS official sites. Some non-ARISS organizations are trying to raise money from folks who think they may be contributing to the real ARISS program. Gaston said that perhaps the official diplomas have a signature from Frank or other ARISS-I official. Rosalie suggested we let each of the IARU regions know about the official certificates and to have something unique and special on our certificates like something related to the series that would only be available from the official certificate. Sergey suggested for the upcoming SSTV event in April, that we post the official certificate design on our website.
Frank summarized those suggestions by saying that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. This shows how successful this program is. Perhaps we need to send out a big press release to clarify which sites are the official SSTV sites. We need to identify and contact the folks who are doing this. Given the hundreds of hours of ARISS volunteer support involved in an SSTV event, these organizations should, rightfully, divert these donations to ARISS. If they want to help with our program, we could let them know of some opportunities to help. We could put something unique on our diplomas such as a QR code that would take folks to an official ARISS site. Perhaps we need to get the ARISS logo trademarked.
Frank thanked everyone for their thoughts on this.
Ad Hoc
Ciaran asked if there were any news about this year’s Face to Face meeting. Frank said that we are going to hold off on this discussion until the February meeting.
Frank thanked everyone for a very good meeting. There was a good dialog. The SSTV events are so popular that folks are copying us. It takes a worldwide effort to put these events on, selecting the themes, gathering images, processing the images, and finally Sergey’s working with the cosmonauts to send out the images.
The next meeting will begin at 1200 UTC on February 15, 2022.
Respectfully submitted,
Martha Muir, ARISS-I Secretary
Go To Meeting/Teleconference
January 18, 2022 – 1200 UTC
Participants:
Oliver Amend
Frank Bauer
Gaston Bertels
Shizuo Endo
Darin Cowan
Emanuele D’Andria
Stefan Dombrowski
Ana Guzman
David Jordan
Glenn MacDonell
Will Marchant
Lou McFadin
Ciaran Morgan
Martha Muir
Eric Oosterbaan
Jan Poppeliers
Kenneth Ransom
Sergey Samburov
Marty Schulman
Dave Taylor
Rosalie White
Satoshi Yasuda
Interpreter: Gregory Khasin
Unable to attend:
Fabio Azzarello
Kerry Banke
Armand Budzianowski
Francesco De Paolis
Martine Diggins
Gianpietro Ferrario
Bruce Hunter
Bertus Husken
Tony Hutchison
Micol Ivancic
Peter Kofler
Keigo Komuro
Chet Latawiec
Michel Nawrocki
Ken Nichols
Gordon Scannell
Graham Shirville
Mark Steiner
Masanobu Tsuji
Meeting Agenda
Roll Call—Martha took attendance by using the names shown on the GoTo Meeting screen.
Welcome—Frank Bauer, KA3HDO
Frank welcomed everyone to the meeting and wished everyone “Happy New Year.” He continued by saying that November marked the 25th anniversary of the existence of the ARISS team. December marked the 21st anniversary of continuous ARISS school contacts.
This year, Sergey will be launching 10 satellites. We anticipate 1 or 2 Axiom flights. Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti should be back onboard the ISS making contacts. HAM TV is ready to ship to Houston with hopes of having it back on the ISS by the end of the year. The ARISS *STAR* program has been fully funded for one year. We expect additional SSTV events in the future. In other words, 2022 should be an exciting year!
- Call for Acceptance of Minutes—Frank Bauer and Martha Muir
For the ARISS-International Monthly Meeting on December 21, 2021, Martha recorded the minutes and distributed the file to ARISS Delegates prior to this ARISS-I meeting. Darin made a motion to accept the minutes. Ciaran seconded that motion. The minutes was adopted without dissent and will be sent to Carol Jackson to be posted on the ARISS-I webpage.
- December SSTV Event featuring Lunar Explorations – Sergey Samburov, Will Marchant, Marty Schulman, Oliver Amend, and Frank Bauer
Sergey thanked the many folks involved in this event and said that the event shows how unified we are as a team. He thanked the US team for organizing and sending him the great images. He also thanked Frank for his great logistical planning. With that, everyone received what was needed on time.
Sergey’s team is planning to launch 10 micro-satellites this year. He is hoping Samantha Cristoforetti will get involved in this. The first six satellites are presently being loaded on a Progress vehicle with hopes they will be on the ISS by some point in February. Eventually, the satellites will be deployed outside the ISS. It is hoped that hams around the world can get involved in the testing of those satellites sometime in July or August. By the end of the year, they will be testing a low bandwidth TV system that will allow high school students in Russia to send images to the ISS.
Frank thanked Sergey for all his efforts and for letting us know what is on the horizon. He asked Sergey to let us know the frequencies that will be used to for the testing of the satellites so that we can get that information out to the Amateur Radio community.
Will Marchant presented the SSTV Image Gallery report. He said that this SSTV event, which ran from December 26 to December 31, was the second most popular SSTV event (behind the 20th anniversary event), He thanked Sergey for making sure the images got up to the ISS in a useable format and Marty for preparing the slide deck. He also thanked the review team that chose “best of” images from the 16,000 images sent in to the gallery. Images were sent in from every continent except Antarctica. About half of the images came in from Europe. There were about 8,000 unique visitors to the website. They visited the site about 12,000 times. 276 pre-college students and 348 pre-college teachers and 310 college students and 685 college educators visited the site.
Sergey chimed in to thank Armand and Slavic for preparing the diplomas for this event.
Oliver presented Armand’s report. Oliver began by thanking Armand and Slavic for developing the diplomas. This was a very successful event. More than 3900 diplomas have been claimed. The majority of those went to hams, some to students using Software Defined Radio dongles and some were not identified.
The signals were good and strong. A lot of handheld radios were used. Some phone apps were used, too.
Oliver shared an interesting report from Armand about a ham in South Africa. That man said that “his five year old son is very excited to get these images.”
On Armand’s behalf, Oliver thanked everyone who contributed images to this project.
Marty supported SSTV image development. He said that his use of an Apple computer made the images in a different file format (JPEG vs JPG) than what the cosmonauts could use with the on-board SSTV software. This caused some initial problems that were quickly corrected by the cosmonauts. Marty said that he created a document to use in future SSTV events that should help new SSTV team members to quickly support the SSTV project. He said it will eventually be available on the ARISS website.
Oliver began his report by saying that the diplomas for these events are very popular. Unfortunately, there are about 15 awards popping up that are not from ARISS. Some of these non-ARISS approved awards are using the ARISS logo. These include one from a Turkish club and another from Indonesia. These unofficial awards are causing confusion. Only the PZK award and the Russian award are the “official” ARISS awards. Oliver asked the team for their advice on a forward action. Stefan suggested we allow it but control it. Have groups register with us to use the logo. Sergey asked if the ARISS logo has a copyright. Frank said no, it doesn’t but it does require permission from ARISS to use. Perhaps we need to set up a permission system set up in advance of future SSTV events. Oliver and Shizuo said that they had tried to contact the groups improperly using the logo. So far they had failed to get a response from them. Glenn suggested we add to the diplomas something like “these are the official diplomas” or “approved by ARISS.” Dave Taylor suggested that identify the ARISS SSTV Gallery and the PZK diploma site as ARISS official sites. Some non-ARISS organizations are trying to raise money from folks who think they may be contributing to the real ARISS program. Gaston said that perhaps the official diplomas have a signature from Frank or other ARISS-I official. Rosalie suggested we let each of the IARU regions know about the official certificates and to have something unique and special on our certificates like something related to the series that would only be available from the official certificate. Sergey suggested for the upcoming SSTV event in April, that we post the official certificate design on our website.
Frank summarized those suggestions by saying that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. This shows how successful this program is. Perhaps we need to send out a big press release to clarify which sites are the official SSTV sites. We need to identify and contact the folks who are doing this. Given the hundreds of hours of ARISS volunteer support involved in an SSTV event, these organizations should, rightfully, divert these donations to ARISS. If they want to help with our program, we could let them know of some opportunities to help. We could put something unique on our diplomas such as a QR code that would take folks to an official ARISS site. Perhaps we need to get the ARISS logo trademarked.
Frank thanked everyone for their thoughts on this.
Ad Hoc
Ciaran asked if there were any news about this year’s Face to Face meeting. Frank said that we are going to hold off on this discussion until the February meeting.
Frank thanked everyone for a very good meeting. There was a good dialog. The SSTV events are so popular that folks are copying us. It takes a worldwide effort to put these events on, selecting the themes, gathering images, processing the images, and finally Sergey’s working with the cosmonauts to send out the images.
The next meeting will begin at 1200 UTC on February 15, 2022.
Respectfully submitted,
Martha Muir, ARISS-I Secretary
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