• January 13: Sayama Mizutomi Community Center in Sayama, Japan hosted a successful ARISS contact between students and Luca Parmitano. An audience of 250 watched students as Parmitano answered 20 of their questions. A TV station, a newspaper and three other news sources were present covering the event. A YouTube file of the ARISS contact that shows student anticipation turning in to happiness is at:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqACsQoYHSw.
  

• January 13:  An article about ARISS was written by an ARISS team member and posted on the website of University of Southern California’s Dornsife College.  The story is about how ARISS garners young people’s interest in STEM and results in “a spark of wonder and delight.”  The URL for the story is: https://dornsife.usc.edu/joint-educational-project/sparking-the-imagination/ .
  

• January 17: The ARISS Team wrote and distributed a new release regarding a new window of opportunity. That will be open February 1 to March 31, 2020 to accept ARISS education proposals.  Winning proposals will be for ARISS contacts during the January to June 2021 timeframe.
  

 
 
        ARISS Upcoming Events      

• January 22:  Ontario Science Centre in Toronto, Canada will host an ARISS contact with Luca Parmitano.
  
• January 22:  Students at Morita Junior High School in Fukui, Japan are planning an ARISS contact with Luca Parmitano.
  
• January 29-31: ARISS-Russia will support an MAI SSTV Session, downlinking space-related images from the ISS.

• January 13: Students at Sayama Mizutomi Community Center in Sayama, Japan had a scheduled ARISS contact with Luca Parmitano.  Details of the activity will be available soon.
  

• January 10: A team of educators who are members of the ARISS-US Education Committee is finalizing the last few processes related to the late 2019 ARISS-US Proposal Window.  The team had ranked the education proposals and then sent a list to the ARISS-US leaders of the top schools and education groups recommended for hosting an ARISS contact. A news release is in draft stage. The organizations selected will be in the queue for scheduled ARISS contacts during the second half of 2020.  A new ARISS-US Proposal Window will open soon and details on this will be forthcoming.

 

• January 13: ARISS leaders are coordinating plans for an ARISS exhibit in Space Center Houston at the 26th annual Space Exploration Educators Conference in February.

 

• January 6 & 10: An ARRL (American Radio Relay League) web story and an item in their online publication, The ARRL Letter, covered the transfer of the new ARISS Interoperable Radio System (IORS) flight unit to Johnson Space Center. ARRL has 160,000 members. The ARISS team aims for the IORS to launch in March to Columbus to support ARISS contacts. 
  

          ARISS Upcoming Events      

• The team is waiting to learn when the next ARISS contact will be scheduled.
  

ARISS Social Media
Facebook in December 2019

Twitter
In the month of December, ARISS Twitter saw a gain of 230. Total Followers are now 11,864.
  
Instagram
As of December 30, 2019, total Instagram Followers are now 119.
 
 
         ARISS Upcoming Events      

• January 13: Students will gather at Sayama Mizutomi Community Center in Sayama, Japan to have an ARISS contact with Luca Parmitano.