• Apr. 15: Astronaut and pioneering ham radio operator Owen Garriott passed away in his home in Huntsville, AL.  Garriott served as a crewmember onboard the Skylab 3 space station and on the Space Shuttle Columbia during the STS-9 mission. He made history in the ham radio community as the first astronaut in space to communicate with hams on Earth using a ham radio station.  This was the start of the SAREX (Shuttle Amateur Radio EXperiment) program, which brought amateur radio education to space, and led to ARISS.  The ARISS Team placed a tribute on the ARISS website’s home page to honor the details of his life, his contributions to the American Space Program, and his impact on ham radio education and communications in space.

• Apr. 15: Members of the Boys & Girls Club of the High Rockies met at the Park County Public Library in Fairplay, CO for their ARISS contact with astronaut Nick Hague.  The youth were a combination of home-schooled students and public school students.  Hague answered 14 student questions while 470 people watched. A number of dignitaries came, including the mayor and a legislative assistant to a local congressional representative. A TV station was present covering the event. A good quality video of the contact is at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATMQ5q3aqoI&feature=share  For nine months, the library sponsored 30 preparatory STEM lessons across 4 library branches and 3 school settings, such as guiding students in building their own model of the ISS.

 

• April:  The Galileo STEM Academy, Eagle, ID, and local ham radio operators have supported several hands-on activities for academy students as preparation for their upcoming ARISS contact. An example is building and learning to aim tape measure antennas while using a portable ham radio to track signals.  The K-5 engineering teacher established a ham radio club and she said students are thoroughly engaged at their radio club meetings.

 

• Apr 18: École internationale de Saint-Sacrement in Quebec City, QC, Canada hosted an ARISS contact between students and astronaut David St-Jacques who answered 19 student questions. The 400 attendees, including 350 students, watched the excitement, and TV media covered the event. The contact was live-streamed--https://youtu.be/SS-dLGPpJC8 (start at about 7 minutes). Another media link is:

http://www.tvanouvelles.ca/videos/6027779323001?fbclid=IwAR2aWgYXRGvkeGvEbuxJiS4g-f0xBkMC_urHufppBcULtpbHZaXdx3T5h2M

•  Apr 11 - 14: ARISS Russia sponsored Slow Scan Television (SSTV) transmissions from the ISS.  Though modulation was low, resulting in less clear images, people with good antennas acquired images and a surprisingly high number were submitted to the ARISS SSTV Gallery at: http://www.spaceflightsoftware.com/ARISS_SSTV/.  Due to a holiday for the ISS crew and the Russian Space Agency, troubleshooting didn’t occur.  Two days afterwards, ARISS Awards Committee member Armand Budzianowski reported his team received 1,200 applications for diplomas, with more applications arriving. 

• The SSTV event proved to be an excellent opportunity to grab the interest of Indian students and get them excited. Rajesh Vagadia of Rajkot, India invited 50 students and citizens to his home for a student outreach event.  He handed out ISS tracking charts and details about the crew, and gave a talk on amateur radio, the ISS, and related topics. Rajesh had planned the event around an outstanding visible ISS pass and the crowd watched in amazement as Rajesh did a radio demo, receiving two SSTV images during the pass. Rajesh remarked, “It was an exciting experience for all to sight the ISS at the same time we got signals from it … felt like having handshakes with ISS crew! … It proved a great learning experience for all. Had lots of Q&A until late.” 

• Apr 15:  An ARISS team member visited the Wesley School in North Hollywood, CA.  He brought portable radio equipment so students could listen to ARISS contact taking place in Fairplay, CO. Wesley School kids exclaimed, "That was AWESOME!"  Next, a ham radio demo allowed students to talk to engineers from the Hughes Amateur Radio Club.  The youth and teachers learned details about ARISS; the faculty wants to prepare an ARISS Education Proposal to garner their own contact and a staff member wants to get her ham license. The ARISS mentor remarked, “I'm convinced that every ham radio contact is an opportunity to teach and share.”
  

• Apr 18: A media show in Brussels, Belgium celebrated World Amateur Radio Day.  ARISS Team member Gaston Bertels was featured in a short segment of the weekly show, BRUZZ International.  The link is:

 http://www.bruzz.be/en/videoreeks/donderdag-18-april-2019/video-world-ham-radio-day-celebrated-ham-radio-fan-gaston

• Apr 15: An ARISS contact that was part of the About Gagarin from Space program was conducted for students at South Ural State University in Chelyabinsk, Russia. The successful contact was supported by Aleksey Ovchinin.

• Apr 15: Huntington High School, Huntington, TX sponsored an ARISS contact with David St-Jacques.  Immediately after, faculty and students began preparing for a trip to leave a few days later for Louisville, KY to compete in the World Vex Robotics competition. Their ARISS information will be in next week’s report.

 

• Apr 17: A short video segment about ARISS ran during the online weekly news show, Ham Nation.  Topics included ARISS SSTV, schools, ARISS volunteers, and clips of ham radio audio from space in honor of the passing of astronaut Owen Garriott.

 
        Upcoming Events          

• Apr 23: Dům dětí a mládeže Olomouc (House of Children and Youth Olomouc), in Olomouc, Czech Republic will host their ARISS contact with Nick Hague.

 

• Apr 24: Students at Hidden Oaks Middle School in Prior Lake, MN, are excited about their upcoming ARISS contact with David St-Jacques.

 

• Apr 6: Students at Shaftesbury High School in Winnipeg, MB, Canada held their ARISS contact with David St-Jacques who answered 12 questions with a crowd of 450 people attending the event.  Grade 9 students from nine schools in the Pembina Trails School Division came to the host school to participate. Media coverage was by CTV and CityTV, the Winnipeg Free Press, and radio stations CJOB and the Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC); the latter two carried on-air interviews. Shaftesbury runs high-altitude robotics projects and students do Mars simulation research with results having been published for presentation at the 2019 Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas. After experiencing the contact, teacher Adrian Deakin observed, "Today, we have planted a seed with students."  CBC quoted Gabriel Cohen (the center student in the photo below) as saying, "When I was in Grade 9 we tried to contact the astronaut on our own and I became a ham radio operator just because I really wanted to get into these things."  The CTV news link is: http://winnipeg.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=1657036
  

• Apr. 11: École des Charmilles in Thyez, France hosted an ARISS contact between students and David St-Jacques; the event was well attended by an audience of 200 people including 170 children, teachers, parents, a number of city hall officials, and a regional deputy. Media at the event consisted of TV8 Mont Blanc doing coverage on satellite TV, Radio Mont Blanc, and two newspapers.  School officials wrote:  “Since September 2018, students have followed with passion the mission of David St-Jacques aboard the space station. Through this activity they developed their curiosity for science and humanist culture.”  Two media links are: TV-MontBlanc - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dG2pKOKAbRM&feature=share Le Dauphiné - http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x75npnk
  

• Apr 15-19:  Two members of the ARISS hardware team were at Johnson Space Center for the week for testing EMI and EMC and several other things on the flight-identical unit of the InterOperable Radio System. The team hopes to launch this new radio system to the ISS in late 2019.

 

• Apr 8: NASA’s annual report, ISS Benefits for Humanity, includes a section on education as one of the many ISS benefits.  This section features a group of programs, and one was ARISS that included a link to take readers to ARISS’s web page. Also in that area of the report is an item titled, "Inspiring Youth with Science in Space" and if readers click on that, it takes them to an article about ARISS recently posted on NASA's web site.  The report also had an item titled, "Spacecraft and Modern Technologies of Personal and International Communication Links in Education," which allowed readers to go to an article on the ham radio SSTV MAI-75 experiments from the ISS.  ISS Benefits for Humanity is found at: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/benefits/global-education
  

 

• Mid-April:  The May edition of ARRL’s monthly journal, QST, contains a new column on ARRL Social Media that highlights the best postings of the month.  One set of highlights was on best media coverage of amateur radio, and it included the article in Scientific American titled, “The International Space Station as a Teaching Tool” that talked about ARISS.  
  

 
         Upcoming Events          

• Apr 15: Huntington High School, Huntington, TX will sponsor an ARISS contact with astronaut David St-Jacques.
  
• Apr 15: Nick Hague will support an ARISS contact for youth involved with Park County Public Library student activities and the Boys & Girls Club of the High Rockies in Fairplay, CO.
  
• (ARISS is waiting on reports from the two schools having ARISS contacts on April 15, and will report on them next week.)
  
• Apr 17:  École internationale de Saint-Sacrement in Quebec City, QC, Canada, will host their ARISS contact with astronaut David St-Jacques.

• Apr 6:  Youth from the 58th Hamilton Scout Group enjoyed speaking with David St-Jacques during their ARISS contact in Stoney Creek, ON, Canada.  He answered 16 questions; about 100 people were present. News coverage of the event was by a local TV station and a newspaper service.  This scout group “…provides youth across genders aged 5 to 26 the opportunity to participate in educational activities in keeping with the `Canadian Path’ program established by Scouts Canada.” The `Canadian Path’ encourages curiosity and imagination to pursue individual interests and skills and puts major emphasis on STEM activities.
  

• Mar 29: A detailed tutorial on how Raspberry Pi users can set up a ham radio Slow Scan TV (SSTV) station and receive SSTV images (pictures) from ISS was written by David Honess, ISS & International Education Operations Coordinator at ESA HE Space Operations BV in ESTEC.  The tutorial, “Pictures from space via ham radio,” was featured in the April 2019 edition of the Mag Pi Journal.  The article includes suggested station hardware, Raspberry Pi code to decode the SSTV images, and links to the ARISS SSTV web page.  Journal readers are also alerted about the upcoming ARISS SSTV downlink event which is planned for April 11-14, 2019.  

• Apr 4:  The ARISS team wrote an item that NASA EXPRESS newsletter ran about the opening of the window to accept ARISS education proposals that could result in scheduled ARISS contacts.  The newsletter goes to 41,125 subscribers and is shared with 114,174 @NASAedu Twitter followers, and potentially 30.68 million @NASA Twitter followers. 
• The NASA EXPRESS newsletter’s fourth blurb was about ARISS opening a window to accept education proposals.

          Contact Opportunity: Amateur Radio on the International Space Station
          Audience: All Educators
          Informational Webinars: April 11 at 7 p.m. EDT and April 16 at 9 p.m. EDT
          Proposal Deadline: May 15
          Contact: ariss.us.education@gmail.com

• Apr 1-2: The ARISS-Russia SSTV event using the MAI (Moscow Aviation Institute)-75 experiment was a success. This radio event featured historical images from the Russian space program downlinked during several ISS orbits over Moscow and nearby areas to ham radio operators and other radio enthusiasts. After receiving the images, many participants posted their images at the ARISS online Gallery.

          Upcoming Events          

• Apr 10:  Students at Shaftesbury High School in Winnipeg, MB, Canada are planning their ARISS contact with David St-Jacques.

 

• Apr 11: All at École des Charmilles in Thyez, France are preparing for their ARISS contact with David St-Jacques.

 

• Apr 11-14:  ARISS plans to downlink Slow Scan TV images as a celebration of Russia’s Cosmonautics Day and international Human Spaceflight, including the anniversary of the first launch of the Space Shuttle on April 12, 1981.  Ham operators and others around the world will download images to post at the ARISS web gallery for the public to see, and in order to earn a special certificate.

 

• Apr 15: Huntington High School, Huntington, TX will sponsor an ARISS contact with astronaut David St-Jacques.

 

• Apr 15: Nick Hague will support an ARISS contact for youth involved with Park County Public Library student activities and the Boys & Girls Club of the High Rockies in Fairplay, CO.

• Apr 17:  École internationale de Saint-Sacrement in Quebec City, QC, Canada, will host their ARISS contact with astronaut David St-Jacques.

        

• ARISS Twitter followers at the end of March totaled 10,385, a gain of over 1% from the end of February.

         Upcoming Events     

• Apr 1-2: ARISS Russia is planning for the Moscow Aviation Institute MAI-75 Slow Scan TV experiment during a few orbits that cover Moscow; expected times are from 1400-1900 UTC. Ham operators there and in adjacent areas should be able to download images.

 

• Apr 6: The 58th Hamilton Scout Group in Stoney Creek, ON, Canada are looking forward to their ARISS contact with David St-Jacques.  

 

• Apr 10:  Students at Shaftesbury High School in Winnipeg, MB, Canada are planning their ARISS contact with David St-Jacques.

 

• Apr 11: All at École des Charmilles in Thyez, France are preparing for their ARISS contact with David St-Jacques.

 

• Apr 11-14: ARISS-Russia plans to hold a Slow Scan TV event related to Cosmonautics Day. Ham operators and others around the world will download images for viewing and posting at the ARISS web gallery to achieve a special event certificate and for the public to see.

• Mar 25: In preparation for their ARISS school contact, students at Moriah Central School in Port Henry, NY have been enjoying a curriculum of space science culminating in building and launching model rockets. The school has designated the first week of April as “Space Week” and will be engaging in more space-related activities prior to their contact day to be sometime in the last week of April.
  

• Mar 20: Excitement filled the students’ day at the North Point School for Boys in Calgary, AB, Canada, as they engaged in their ARISS contact with David St-Jacques.  He told students, “Every teacher that has ever taught me anything contributed to my training as an astronaut.”  He answered 16 student questions as an audience of 100 listened.  The school’s online news venues carried several stories about the event. Two TV stations’ reporters were present, and one clip is at:  http://calgary.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=1640517

 

• The school instructor, dressed in a Canadian Space Agency (CSA) jumpsuit complete with CSA patch, was highly pleased about students’ interest in their STEM studies because of the ARISS contact. One activity was building a model of the first Canadian satellite, Alouette 1, which had been launched by NASA.

• Mar 19: The ARISS team continues to make good progress on building the replacement antenna that had to be fabricated because the current ARISS antenna on the ISS will be removed when the Bartolomeo platform is installed.  The testing on the replacement antenna is complete; it has been coated with the silicon oxide depositing to protect from the atomic oxygen environment in space.  ARISS is waiting for Airbus to send the feedline and the handrail clamp so that the team can integrate them with the antenna.

• Mar 18: Nine electrical boards are being populated for each of the 10 units of the new ARISS custom-built Multi-Voltage Power Supply to be completed.  The power supplies are part of the ARISS InterOperable Radio Systems that will replace the aging ham stations on the ISS.  A special group of people were hired to populate the boards so that ARISS team members can build other parts of the radio systems and prepare for the next steps, which are the tests of the flight-identical unit and then the tests of the flight units. 

•  Mar 26:  ARISS will open a window to accept ARISS education proposals from schools and education groups hoping to garner an ARISS contact.  The window is from April 1 to May 15, 2019. This proposal cycle is for ARISS contacts to be scheduled between January 1 and June 30, 2020.  Webinars to answer educators’ questions will be held on April 11 and 16.

• Mar 18:  During an interview for the online podcast, QSO Today, news reporter Joe Lynch spoke about his favorite ham radio activities.  He also discussed ham programs that he feels are the most beneficial to others, and described several aspects of ARISS education activities.

 
 
         Upcoming Events     

• Mar 26: An ARISS contact is scheduled with students at Khabarovsk University in Khabarovsk, Russia, and Oleg Konenenko will be interviewed.
  

• Mar 28: Students at Ulluriaq School in Kangiqsualujjuaq, QC, Canada will speak with David St-Jacques during their upcoming ARISS contact.
  

• Apr 1-2: ARISS Russia is planning to run their Moscow Aviation Institute MAI-75 Slow Scan TV experiment during a few orbits that cover Moscow. Ham operators there and in adjacent areas should be able to downlink images.
  

• Apr 6: The 58th Hamilton Scout Group in Stoney Creek, ON, Canada are looking forward to their ARISS contact with David St-Jacques.  

• Mar 14:   The ARISS team continues to make good progress on the Interoperable Radio System (IORS) being developed to replace the aging, problematic ISS ham station on the ISS.  During a materials review of the IORS Multi-Voltage Power Supply, the plastic used to house its external cooling fan was judged as flammable in the ISS environment.  The team must use a different plastic and will be working with NASA HUNCH to accomplish this.  Students and their NASA mentors will be 3-D printing a plastic unit in two weeks as an evaluation sample.  It will then be decided if the new plastic cover is workable.
  

         Upcoming Events       

• Mar 20: Students at the North Point School for Boys in Calgary, AB, Canada, will have an ARISS contact with David St-Jacques.
  

• Mar 5:  An ARISS radio contact was hosted for students at CEIP Nuestra Señora Del Carmen in Torre De La Reina, Spain and David St-Jacques. He answered 18 questions while an audience of 100 listened.  There were three TV stations covering the event along with four radio news services and four newspapers.  A video was made, and the first seven minutes featured many images of student activities done over the months prior to the contact, such as studying various NASA science missions, using telescopes, learning about and practicing ham radio communications with the help of the Union of Radio Amateurs of Seville, and building models of rockets, the solar system, and space vehicles.  The middle section of the video consisted of several talks, including a message from Pedro Duque, and short presentations given by a group of students (these begin at 33 minutes).  The URL of the video is (the contact begins at 47 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rdo2-Yd6LPc&feature=youtu.be 
  

• Mar 6: The ARISS team distributed a news release about its online auction to be held April 8-14. Two unique items will be auctioned, a JVC Kenwood TS-890S transceiver signed by astronauts and a six-volume boxed set of the 2019 ARRL Handbook signed by astronauts.
  

 

• Feb 25: Huntington High School students and teachers in Huntington, TX presented their ARISS Mentor, Keith Pugh, with a very special shirt signed by all student members of the Huntington High School radio club. The club calls itself Gearheads, and the club’s ham call sign is KI5AJL. The shirt was readied and framed to show their appreciation of Keith’s support for their ARISS contact.  An unknown problem caused the contact to be unsuccessful; ARISS is attempting to schedule another date for them.

         Upcoming Events       

• Mar 20: Students at the North Point School for Boys in Calgary, AB, Canada, will have an ARISS contact with David St-Jacques.
  

• Feb 25:  The scheduled contact for Huntington High School students in Huntington, TX was unsuccessful though both the school and astronaut David St-Jacques were ready and calling. The team is trying to determine what happened
  

• Feb 25:  Pathfinder Regional Vocational Technical High School students in Palmer, MA were thrilled over their November ARISS contact with Serena Aunon-Chancellor.  They had a year of hands-on space projects and radio activities related to these subjects: CAD, Electrical, Electronics, Advanced Manufacturing, Auto Body, Business Technologies, HVAC/R, Computer Programming and Web. They’re continuing these studies, and the latest activity was making things for a thank you package they sent last week to Serena.  The most unusual present was a cribbage board custom built for Serena.  The next planned activity is a balloon launch with a ham radio payload.  Several students are studying for their ham radio licenses so they can work with the payload; one student already earned his license.

                                            ARISS Social Media - February 2019
 
                                                  ARISS Facebook Page Report  

• ARISS Twitter followers at the end of February totaled 10,276, a gain of 3.4% over the end of January.

 
           Upcoming Events       

• Mar 5:  CEIP Nuestra Senora Del Carmen students in Torre De La Reina, Spain will be talking with David St-Jacques.
  

• Feb 21: Last week’s report described school activities revolving around the Faith Christian Academy ARISS contact on Feb. 14 in Orlando, FL.  A week later, radio station WMFE posted photos and an interview by space reporter Brendan Byrne. The outstanding report of the events was for the station’s news segment, and is at: http://www.wmfe.org/students-talk-with-astronaut-on-space-station-with-a-little-help-from-amateur-radio-operators/97375.  
  

• Feb. 21: As the NASA On The Air Slow Scan TV image transmissions wound down, the ARISS team received a number of emails from people who participated for the first time and really enjoyed downloading images.  Here is an example:
  
• “I did not take a selfie of my first endeavor into non-conventional RF operation. But picture an adult man in his suburban front yard Saturday AM, in sweatshirt, slippers and pajama bottoms pointing a handheld-radio in the air and recording a sound stream into his smartphone -- having little idea of what he was doing or what would happen (and hoping the neighbors were not watching).  Through trial and error, I obtained an SSTV image by playing the recorded audio into the CQ SSTV app on my IPad. It wasn't the greatest print, but one of the coolest things I've done in amateur radio!  The icing on the cake was that night at a dinner party with friends (all non-hams), the question was posed to me if my radio hobby has progressed into the modern tech age.  What a great story I was able to share!”

 
          Upcoming Events       

• Feb 25:  Huntington High School students in Huntington, TX will have an ARISS contact with David St-Jacques. [Trying to re-schedule and determine what happened.]
• Mar 5:  CEIP Nuestra Senora Del Carmen students in Torre De La Reina, Spain will be talking with David St-Jacques.

• Feb 11:  Huntington High School students in Huntington, TX recently won a robotics competition at The Patricia Huffman Smith NASA “Remembering Columbia” Museum. Their ARISS contact is next week and area ham operators coached teacher Peggy Albritton’s robotics team and mentored students in lessons on electronics, design engineering, and more.  Students loved downloading SSTV images and made ARISS packet radio contacts.  Peggy described media interest as follows: “This week, CBS-TV 19, KICKS radio, and Lufkin Daily News reporters are coming to school to interview students. KLTV/KTRE will live-stream the actual radio contact.”  A story already posted is at: http://www.ktre.com/2019/02/09/huntington-students-make-radio-call-nasa-astronauts-aboard-space-station/?fbclid=IwAR0-UCIh0WnRFR-qnJOkyTWpxhJiESDgs126WWsorp-l0oxZfn2kudpRue0
  

• Feb 14: Faith Christian Academy in Orlando, FL hosted an ARISS contact with David St-Jacques, who answered 19 student questions while a crowd of 700 students and another 125 visitors listened. Sharon Hagle, who along with her husband is a future passenger on a future Virgin Galactic flight and founder of Spacekids Global Missions, gave a presentation to students. Attendees included the president of The League of Christian Schools, the Winter Springs City Commissioner, representatives from Lockheed Martin and the Step Up for Students group, and reporters from WMFE News and WESH TV. The school’s Facebook page live-streamed the contact (714 views) as did the Faith Assembly. Students had traveled to Kennedy Space Center, took part in space-related special activities, built ISS Above Raspberry Pi kits, downlinked SSTV images from the ISS, learned how satellite radio contacts work, and more.
  

• Feb. 5: ARISS was one of the CASIS Space Station Explorer (SSE) programs cited in Scientific American’s online opinion piece celebrating SSE groups and their visions for education.  The article is at:   http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-international-space-station-as-a-teaching-tool/

 

• Feb. 12:   ARISS celebrated a Social Media milestone – the ARISS Twitter account now has over 10,000 followers!  

 

• Feb 13:  Students at College Park School in Lloydminster, Alberta, Canada had an ARISS contact with David St-Jacques.  A crowd of 600 watched as students questioned St.-Jacques about his ISS activities; he answer 20 questions.  A TV station reporter was on hand and the events held in the gymnasium were live-streamed on the school’s Facebook page.  A good radio station web story is at: http://www.mylloydminsternow.com/29141/college-spark-school-makes-first-contact-with-the-iss/   A YouTube was posted by Prime Time News CITL / CKSA at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=synMdnK6iRE&feature=youtu.be&t=1m39s
  

• Feb 15-17:  The Russian Space Agency graciously provided time for NASA On The Air Slow Scan TV images to be transmitted a second weekend because of low-power signals the first day of the previous weekend’s event.  The 12 images highlighted the Russian and American space programs and were downlinked by students, space enthusiasts, and ham radio operators around the world. These people submitted 1,713 files the first weekend and 1,136 the second weekend, and most were posted to the ARISS SSTV Gallery at: http://www.spaceflightsoftware.com/ARISS_SSTV/. 
  

          Upcoming Events      

• Feb 25:   Huntington High School students in Huntington, TX will have an ARISS contact with David St-Jacques.