• October 14: Students at Ramona Lutheran Christian School (RLCS) in Ramona, CA had an ARISS contact with Chris Cassidy who answered 17 questions. RLCS’s lead ARISS teacher Kelly Cammarano, a Navy veteran, was thrilled her students spoke with Cassidy, a US Navy Captain! Watching and listening live to the social-distanced student interviewers at the school were 1,458 people including fellow students, educators, school administrators, parents, and area citizens. The videographer posted a recording on the web 3 days later, garnering 330 more viewers within 24 hours. At the Red Hill Lutheran School in Tustin, CA, 80 miles away, students and teachers had a ham radio set and listened to the ARISS contact. RLCS engages students in STEM-enrichment activities: robotics, coding, physics, space-related sciences. The Ramona Outback Amateur Radio Society (ROARS) mentored students in radio theory and on-air protocol for handling emergency communications, and supported the contact. In 2019, Kelly Cammarano, who had earned her ham license a year earlier, attended ARRL’s (American Radio Relay League) week long professional development course in Connecticut on integrating wireless technology into school. Afterwards, ARRL awarded RLCS a complete set of radio station equipment, making for the first school ham station in Ramona. ROARS provided needed items to make it solar powered. The school enjoyed several nice news articles written in the past 8 months about student ARISS activities.
  

• October 8: Students from KMO Kolska Wyspa in Kolo, Poland who took part in a recent ARISS contact spoke in that city at its World Space Week 2020 celebration. Attendees at the event included 82 primary and secondary students, the deputy head of Kolo, school principals, teachers, parents and two media outlets’ reporters. Event leaders recognized the students who spoke to Chris Cassidy during the ARISS contact. The ARISS students and leaders gave presentations about the ISS, ham radio, and the ARISS program. KMO Kolska Wyspa was lauded for teaching all ages of children about robotics and then students in grades 1 through 12 gave demonstrations showing off their robots, many assembled while youth have been home for Covid.
  

• October 17: Dave Taylor, Kerry Banke and Frank Bauer gave a one-hour presentation at the 2020 AMSAT Symposium, which boasted 891 viewers. The three spoke on these major topics: an overview of ARISS’s past year, development history of ARISS’s new InterOperable Radio System on the ISS, and plans for future ARISS hardware to use potentially on Gateway. 
  

• October 17: ARISS educator Melissa Pore and two of her students from Arlington, VA were part of another AMSAT Symposium talk, giving a short presentation during the AMSAT Education Forum. They covered ARISS Radio Pi and ARISS SSTV with 891 watching. The two students, Emily and William, had taken part in building two different types of satellites in Pore’s classes. The two young people are co-presidents of the Bishop O’Connell High School Ham Club and officers in the school’s Engineering Club.
  

• October 10 & 14: ARISS volunteer Charlie Sufana presented a talk at the 2020 annual Melbourne (FL) Hamfest on the history of ARISS. He explained how schools can apply for an ARISS contact and he showed a video of a contact he had mentored. He ended the talk with a Q&A session. Due to Covid, attendance was very light but allowed for social distancing. Four days later, Sufana presented the talk at a Zoom meeting of the Radio Amateur Training, Planning and Activities Committee, hosted by a ham operator in Idaho. 88 viewers watched.
  

 

• October 9: ARISS-Europe volunteer Armand Budzianowski and Dr. Krzysztof Czart, an astronomer and journalist, wrote an article on ARISS SSTV events for the Polish online news source Urania. The item featured the October SSTV event described in last week’s ARISS report, where 2,618 individuals (some hams and some space enthusiasts) downloaded images. The article detailed what a person needs to take part, including free software to display images. The story highlighted the ARISS Polish volunteers who provide special award certificates to participants who post images at the online ARISS SSTV Gallery. The article is at: 
  
• https://www.urania.edu.pl/wiadomosci/konkurs-ariss-sstv-sprobuj-odebrac-obraz-ze-stacji-iss

• October 15: Due to limitations on volunteer crew support, ARISS school contacts will not be scheduled until after the Crew 1 arrives at the ISS and completes their two-week orientation.  Meantime, the ARISS radio is set up in APRS packet mode for ham radio operators to interact with the ISS through ARISS.

 
         Upcoming Events
 

• October 22: Frank Bauer and ARISS educator Joanne Michael will give a presentation on ARISS at the virtual 2020 ISS R&D Conference.
  

 

• October 20: Drew Deskur, member of the ARISS-US Education Committee, will present a poster session talk related to ARISS at the virtual Association of Science & Technology Centers Annual Conference.

• October 4 - 8: An ARISS Slow Scan TV (SSTV) event took place commemorating amateur radio satellites and the people who support them. The SSTV session began on the anniversary of the Sputnik launch on October 4, 1957; images featured this anniversary. ARISS SSTV is very popular and this event ran for 2 days, was paused for the docking of the Cygnus vehicle, then downlinking resumed and continued through October 8. Cosmonauts downlinked images for ham operators and the public to receive and post at the online ARISS SSTV Gallery at https://www.spaceflightsoftware.com/ARISS_SSTV/. After posting images, they could request a special award for their successful image reception. At this time, the number of participants has not been tallied.
  

• October 7: Students spoke with Chris Cassidy during the ARISS contact at McConnell Middle School in Loganville, GA. For this ARISS Multi-Point Telebridge Contact via Amateur Radio, he answered 14 questions from students--some at home but most social-distanced at school. The audience on site included 2,364 students, 196 teachers and staff, and a news reporter. The ARISS YouTube livestream was watched by 522 people and there were 3.6K Playbacks. The lead teacher reported that “cluster schools” (1 high school, 3 elementary schools) were tuned in, also. In the 48 hours afterwards, 3,674 more people watched the YouTube recording; the URL of this outstanding ARISS contact is: https://t.co/5k634WiVkE?amp=1. Students had enjoyed a large amount of space and communications lessons including researching ISS payloads, working with ISS Above, connecting electrical components together to make circuits, building electronic kits and ham antennas, and displaying several of the latter things at their booth at a large technical conference. The school’s McConnell Amateur Radio Club captured student interest and some took part in ham license classes and earned their licenses. Two who gave their names and call signs at the beginning of their questions to Cassidy were singled out when he gave his special congratulations to them on becoming licensed. The ARISS Educational Ambassador wrote, “A few students interviewing Chris were home but most were at school, masked and social distanced. I stood at the microphone table signaling students when to approach the mic and pull face masks down before asking their questions. This gave me a very special view—I may have been the only person to get to see the great ear-to-ear full-face smile that emerged on each student's face after he/she asked their question and heard Chris respond. As each one stepped away and pulled up the mask, the huge smile extended to their eyes.”
  

• October 10: After taking part in a 2018 ARISS contact in middle school and being in classes taught by ARISS educator Martha Muir, a young lady now in high school continues to be interested in STEM. The high schooler presented a video poster session at the 17th Annual AIAA (American Institute of Aeronautics & Astronautics) Orange County Aerospace Systems and Technology Conference (ASAT), this year held on Zoom. The young lady’s topic was “ARISS From the Student Point of View."  Attendees at the student presentations (32 students, 6 educators) topped all other audience numbers except for the keynote morning speech. Presentations will be archived for many others to view. This high school junior recently earned her amateur radio Technician License.  She thinks she may major in Communications and minor in Psychology.  
  

• October 7: ARISS supporter John Brier in Raleigh, NC shared an evening with a neighborhood young ISS fan. John set up his ham station outside to demonstrate ARISS Slow Scan TV (SSTV) and ARISS APRS packet radio, including how to perfectly adjust audio levels to download good SSTV images. When the ISS orbited overhead, they worked together and were rewarded, downloading very clear images. John switched his ham radio to the ARISS packet system frequency and he and the boy contacted a ham in Virginia. John made this a special evening his very young space buddy will never forget.
  

• October 7: Frank Bauer gave a talk about ARISS at a Zoom meeting of the Sterling Park (VA) Amateur Radio Club for 29 members and guests, including 2 teachers and ARRL Vice Director Mark Tharp in Washington state. Frank’s presentation covered ARISS’s current status, highlights of its 20 years of continuous operations, and some visions being developed into future realities.
  

• October 8: Nineteen participants tied into the online ARISS Proposal Webinar presented by ARISS leaders John Kludt and Kathy Lamont who shared information and answered questions for educators with an interest in submitting ARISS Education Proposals. The window to submit proposals opened recently. The webinar covered everything from how to submit a proposal to a timetable for deliverables for groups that will be selected. Participants included individuals from schools and education groups and also from a few ham radio organizations. The webinar was recorded and will be linked to the ariss.org website for the remainder of the proposal window, which closes November 24.  
  

 

• October 9: Due to a conflict, an ARISS contact was postponed for the students involved with RO-SAT One projects in Piatra Neamt, Romania.
  

 

• October 9: An ARISS contact was held for students in Vladivostok, Russia with Anatoli Ivanishin supporting the event. No details have been received yet.

 

• October 1-12:  The ARISS team continues to prepare a number of publicity items that will commemorate the 20 years of ARISS supporting continuous amateur radio operations on the ISS.

 
         Upcoming Events
 

• October 14: Students from Ramona Lutheran Christian School in Ramona CA are scheduled for an ARISS contact with Chris Cassidy.
  

 

• October 17: A feature at the 2020 AMSAT Symposium will be a one-hour presentation on ARISS radio hardware, operations of ARISS’s new InterOperable Radio System on the ISS, and future hardware to use potentially on Gateway. 

 

• October 22: Frank Bauer and ARISS educator Joanne Michael will give a presentation on ARISS at the virtual 2020 ISS R&D Conference.

• October 1: ARISS distributed a news release about a window opening this week to accept ARISS Education Proposals from US schools and education groups interested in hosting an ARISS contact. This would be for contacts to be scheduled between July 1 to December 31, 2021.  A special blurb was composed for listing in the NASA EXPRESS newsletter. The newsletter was sent to 48,645 subscribers and shared through the Office of STEM Engagement’s social media tools with 268,145 @NASASTEM Twitter followers, 88,300 NASA STEM Engagement Facebook  followers, and 335,740 NASA STEM Pinterest followers (a total of 740,830 viewers).  

• September 30 - October 1: The Russian ISS crew supported a two-day Moscow Aviation Institute Slow Scan TV (SSTV) experiment. They used the Service Module’s ham radio equipment to downlink 12 images featuring the Russian space program.  585 amateur radio operators and/or space enthusiasts downloaded images and posted them on the ARISS SSTV Gallery at https://www.spaceflightsoftware.com/ARISS_SSTV/. ARISS announced the event on its Social Media platforms and Facebook brought in very high interest--12,129 Reaches.
  

• September 28: The About Gagarin From Space program was part of an ARISS contact for students from the International Aerospace School at Amur State University in Blagoveshchensk, Russia. Anatoli Ivanishin supported the contact.
  

 

• September 25: NASA produced an infographic commemorating ARISS’s 20 years of continuous amateur radio operations on the ISS. NASA posted the infographic on its web site and several of its social media accounts. The ISS National Lab did, as well. The infographic cites ARISS as one of the first active payloads launched to the ISS. A quote from Drew Morgan is featured; he described how watching a video of an ARISS contact inspired him to participate in the program while in space as a way to reach and inspire kids. Astronaut Clay Anderson saw the infographic and Re-tweeted it with a nice remembrance of the ARISS contacts he made during his ISS mission.

Image: NASA’s infographic honoring ARISS’s 20 years of continuous amateur radio operation on the ISS

• September 25: As part of student preparations for an ARISS contact at the Oregon Charter Academy (ORCA) in Mill City, OR, Principal Dan Vasen and staff held the first of several monthly Remote And DIstant Online (RADIO) sessions for students. The live sessions originate from Space Center Houston and work in conjunction with the ORCA/ARISS/NASA club. Students tune in from home and can talk with teachers about lessons. This particular one was “Bringing the Universe into Focus through the Lens of a Telescope” and was on how the new James Webb Telescope works and what you can expect to see, and also on the life cycle of the sun. Sessions are recorded so students can watch more than once. The principal said, “This will give the students lots of opportunities to enrich their lives with science, technology, engineering and mathematics content.”
  

ARISS Social Media
Facebook in September 2020

Twitter: As of September 30 2020, ARISS Twitter followers totaled 13,336, a gain over August.
 
Instagram: As of September 30, 2020, Instagram followers had increased to 167.
 
 
         Upcoming Events

• October 7: Frank Bauer will give a talk about ARISS at a Zoom meeting of the Sterling Park (VA) Amateur Radio Club.

• October 4 – 8: Details will be available in next week’s report about an ARISS Slow Scan TV (SSTV) session planned for radio and space enthusiasts worldwide. The theme for the images is satellites and the event was in conjunction with the anniversary of the launch of Sputnik.

• October 10: A former student of ARISS educator Martha Muir will present at a video poster session of the 17th Annual AIAA Orange County Aerospace Systems and Technology Conference (ASAT). The young lady's presentation is titled “ARISS From the Student Point of View."

• October 7: Subject to a last-minute change, Chris Cassidy will speak with students from McConnell Middle School in Loganville, GA during an ARISS Multi-Point Telebridge Contact via Amateur Radio.
  

• October 9: An ARISS contact will be held for students in Vladivostok, Russia and Anatoli Ivanishin will be supporting the event. 

• September 26: ARISS-International Vice Chair Oliver Amend gave a presentation at the AMSAT-DL 2020 Symposium; the talk was to update listeners on ARISS and ARISS AREx (Lunar Gateway) activities. AMSAT-DL is the national AMSAT society in Germany. This year’s symposium activity was via Zoom and YouTube video. Audio-only was also available thanks to WiFi and the OSCAR Q-100 satellite. Listeners were from many countries, so most of the lectures were given in English with charts shown in Deutsch and English. Live views of Amend’s presentation totaled 250 and live audio was heard by 500. Within 30 hours, the YouTube was viewed by 2,844 people.
  

• September 22: ARISS-US Education Committee member Joanne Michael presented a talk to a virtual audience attending a 2020 ISS R&D Conference panel session. Her talk was titled, "Using Amateur Radio on the International Space Station to Invoke Curiosity in Elementary Students.” She described the ARISS program and its unique way of inspiring students to pursue STEM-focused careers by giving them the opportunity to engage in a ham radio Q&A session with an ISS crew member. She discussed the ARISS-sponsored mid-altitude balloon race and online lessons on how to use the internet to track balloons carrying ham radio pico transmitters that transmit data. Michael’s session was watched by 91 viewers and 13 panelists. She has been a K-5 Science/STEM coach in several California school districts and hosted an ARISS school contact for her students in 2017. 
  

• September 2: ARISS educator Neil Rapp spoke via Zoom to 33 members of the Orlando Radio Club (FL) with 53 club members viewing the video afterwards. Topics discussed were youth in ham radio and their ARISS activities, both in schools and at the Youth On The Air summer camp.
  

 
  
         ARISS Upcoming Events
 

• September 28: ARISS-Russia scheduled an ARISS contact to be supported by Anatoli Ivanishin for students of Amur State University in Blagoveshchensk, Russia. Details should be known soon.
  

 

• A September 29th ARISS contact for four schools sponsored by the Turkish State Meteorological Service in Ankara, Turkey with Chris Cassidy will be re-scheduled due to the crew isolating for ISS leak tests.

 

• October 10: A former student of ARISS educator Martha Muir will present at a video poster session of the 17th Annual AIAA Orange County Aerospace Systems and Technology Conference (ASAT). The young lady's presentation is titled “ARISS From the Student Point of View."

 

• September 30 – October1: A Slow Scan TV (SSTV) event was scheduled using the Moscow Aviation Institute (MAI-75) experiment on board the ISS.

 

• October 7: Chris Cassidy will speak with students from McConnell Middle School in Loganville, GA during an ARISS Multi-Point Telebridge Contact via Amateur Radio.

 

• October 9: Students near Piatra Neamt, Romania who have been taking part in RO-SAT One projects supported by the area’s National College of Computer Science will speak with Chris Cassidy during an ARISS contact.

• September 18: The Avellaneda Ikastetxea school in Sodupe, Spain hosted an ARISS contact utilizing the ARISS South African telebridge radio ground station to relay communications between students and the ARISS ham station on the ISS. Chris Cassidy supported the contact and answered 10 students’ questions. An audience of 200 watched, including a QMEC TV crew who taped a video and aired it on their news shows. The contact was live streamed, garnering 152 real time viewers and shortly afterwards, 133 more.  The school had posted many messages about the ARISS contact on its Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and web pages.  Faculty coordinated with 15 other schools on a STEM-based curriculum that includes a mentoring program with Deusto University. Students in 1st through 6th grade took part in the ARISS contact and had built models of space vehicles, rockets, the planets, and did online STEM sessions on space, gravity, matter, energy. Prior to Covid, students did a Tomatosphere growth experiment.
  

• August 18: As part of Bishop O’Connell High School students’ on-going STEM learning in the Arlington, VA area, ARISS educator Melissa Pore led them in doing a Tomatosphere project, comparing growth results via online classes. Students had heard an online guest speaker sharing her research results at the Colorado School of Mines on arid Native American permaculture, including growing tomatoes. The 30 listening students and 5 teachers, many who had taken part in an ARISS contact last year, enjoyed learning that the research is being applied to possible farming in regolith on Mars.
  

• September 2-17: The news of Chris Cassidy having set up and installed the ARISS Next-gen Radio System (InterOperable Radio System—IORS) is a popular topic for news show hosts and for posted news stories. Here are 8 examples of ARISS PR hits.
  

•    * September 11: The Hackaday blog utilized material from ARISS’s news release on its new Interoperable Radio System to post a feature on it. The presentation incorporated eye-catching graphics and text to help ham operators learn intricacies of using the repeater mode. The site had a comment section for visitors to ask questions and get answers. The link is: https://hackaday.com/2020/09/10/iss-ham-radio-repeater/.
  

 

• * September 15: An article was posted on the K0LWC blog about the new IORS. The author had contacted Kenneth Ransom for specific details in order to write about the cross-band repeater mode. The article is at http://k0lwc.com/new-ham-radio-onboard-the-iss-is-on-the-air/ and the author reported that the blog garnered 18,000 visitors. A Twitter item was also posted.
  

 

• * September 16: ARISS team member Dave Taylor spoke to 15 members of the Columbia (MD) Amateur Radio Association on good techniques to use when making a contact through the IORS when it is in cross-band repeater mode. This was an online talk followed by a lively Q&A.
  

 

• * September 16: One of the well-known hosts (Gordon West) of the popular online weekly show Ham Nation, gave a talk last week on the new IORS. This week he gave Part 2 of his talk. He focused on the FM characteristics of the ARISS cross-band repeater and best antennas to try to when interacting with the new ISS radio. West said he continues to receive many emails with comments from ham operators who are enjoying the new ISS radio.
  

 

• * September 17: ARISS hardware volunteers Frank Bauer, Lou McFadin and Kerry Banke were guest speakers on the online weekly show (Episode 228) of Ham Talk Live!. They spoke about features of the new IORS radio and that was followed by a Q&A session via Twitter and phone call-in. A recording of the episode is also available at www.hamtalklive!.com. Attendees totaled 35 with another 360 watching the recording. The show’s host wrote: “It is always a pleasure to have people like Frank and Rosalie on Ham Talk Live! sharing their first-hand knowledge about ARISS. Last night, listeners got to hear the two lead hardware designers of the new radio system.”
  

 

• *September 2: ARISS enthusiast John Brier created two Space Comms videos on the activation of the IORS in repeater mode. Video Part 1 announces the news, features an audio clip from an actual pass, and explains all about the new repeater mode. Video Part 2 has audio clips from a full pass of the ISS of radio contacts between hams, allowing viewers to learn about the new enhancement to ARISS’s ISS capabilities. Links to videos are: Part 1: https://youtu.be/6LIgfv_cDCk and Part 2: https://youtu.be/M4gYuUgPAWY
  

• * September 2: The American Radio Relay League (ARRL) posted a lengthy article on its web pages based on ARISS’s news release and email exchanges with Rosalie White about the new ARISS radio system. Information included how the team worked on the second set of hardware to be launched later. ARRL web pages garner over 100,000 readers.  
  

 

• * September 10: ARISS volunteer Dave Johnson presented a Zoom talk to 27 members of the Peoria-Area (IL) Amateur Radio Club followed by a 30-minute Q&A.  Later, 60 other people viewed a recording of the talk.  It covered ARISS’s past, present and future and Johnson shared photos and details of his experiences supporting ARISS school contacts. Dave received many compliments such as “Absolutely awesome.” and “Thoroughly enjoyed it.”  One person asked Dave to give the talk to a club that is located in southern Illinois.
  

 
         ARISS Upcoming Events     
 

• September 22: ARISS educator Joanne Michael will be part of a panel presenting at the online ISS R&D Conference. The panel will celebrate 20 years of student experiments using the ISS, and ARISS will be highlighted, including that it was very first operational experiment on the ISS.
  

 

• September 26: Oliver Amend will give a presentation for the online AMSAT DL 2020 Symposium. The event will feature pre-recorded talks transmitted live on QO-100 and via YouTube.

 

• September 28: ARISS Russia will schedule a contact to be support by Anatoli Ivanishin for students of Amur State University in Blagoveshchensk, Russia. 

• September 10: Students at the Collège Raymond Sirot and the Raymond Sirot Middle School in Gueux, France were involved in an ARISS radio contact, interviewing Chris Cassidy about his experiences on board the ISS. He answered 12 questions as the radio communications were relayed, due to the Covid crisis, through one of ARISS’s Australian amateur radio ground stations. The audience consisted of 110 students. The Departement de la Marne (government education agency) livestreamed the contact to 600 students in all schools in the Marne region, and 2,300 others viewed the stream afterwards. A live YouTube garnered 192 views. An outstanding showing of news media covered the event: regional TV FR3 Champagne Ardenne, regional radio France bleu Champagne-Ardenne, national radio NRJ and RCF, regional newspaper L’Union, and several private video channels. The school staff put a large emphasis on explaining to the audience the role that ham radio played in the event. Both schools’ students learn about space, gravity, matter and energy and do project-based STEM learning. The Collège partners with a planetarium (who also streamed the ARISS contact for 48 viewers) and an area ham radio group so students can learn about the universe and amateur radio.

• September 9: The ham news podcast, Ham Nation, ran a 20-minute segment covering the recent activation of the ARISS InterOperable Radio System (IORS) on the ISS. The host for this portion of the evening’s program was well-known amateur radio personality, mentor and ARISS donor, Gordon West. Rosalie White had been corresponding with him about ARISS’s successes and he decided to tell his audience about ARISS this week and again next week. During his talk, he explained the IORS’s capabilities, the cross-band repeater mode it is currently in, and how to interact with this ISS communication option. His slides illustrated good techniques for making an ARISS repeater contact. The YouTube attracted 324 live viewers and thus far, another 850 afterwards. The link is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krsha5dSoi4&t=3066s.

 

• September 2: A San Diego, CA, CBS News reporter asked ARISS team member Kerry Banke for an interview at his house. The result was a feature story about how ARISS facilitates students to talk to astronauts, the positive ways students are affected by this, and Banke’s volunteer work on the new ARISS radio system. The article included an older video clip of Doug Wheelock demonstrating how he used ARISS equipment in the Russian Service Module to talk to ham radio operators and featured Wheelock giving a mini tour of the ISS. The URL is: https://www.cbs8.com/article/news/local/zevely-zone/la-mesa-man-building-space-radios-from-his-garage/509-445801a4-aaf2-419b-8758-f423d8333a04
  

 

• August 25: The ISS Ham media team at Johnson Space Center created and posted a great nine-minute video on ARISS and amateur radio. It highlighted Chris Cassidy supporting the May 15th ARISS contact for young members of the Airdrie Space Science Club and other area students in Airdrie, Alberta. Within 2 days, views of the post totaled 36,700 with 214 Re-tweets and 1,100 likes. The link is: https://twitter.com/Space_Station/status/1298273936124153860.

 

• Also, the ISS Ham team posted the video on YouTube. In 2 weeks, views totaled 11,567.    The link is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=1clACXLdDhs&feature=emb_logo.

 

• A few hours later, Cassidy posted comments about the video on his own Twitter account so more people could see the video. It quickly got 22,400 views, 96 Re-tweets and 648 likes. His link is: https://twitter.com/Astro_SEAL/status/1299104348811612160.

 

• ARISS sponsor ARRL (American Radio Relay League) posted Cassidy’s video on its Facebook page and quickly saw: 8,177 people reached, 383 engagements, 194 reactions, and 52 shares. Many other ham radio and non-ham radio news outlets picked up the story.  ARRL’s Facebook link is: https://www.facebook.com/ARRL.org/posts/10157912097177408.
  

 

• The video went global! Hours after the first posting, the UK’s DailyMail posted the story; link is: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8666705/NASA-astronaut-Chris-Cassidy-ISS-receives-call-Canadian-students-using-ham-radio.html
  

 
                                              ARISS Social Media
                                            Facebook in August 2020

Twitter: As of August 31, 2020, ARISS Twitter followers totaled 13,083, a gain of 142 over July.
  
Instagram: As of August 31, 2020, Instagram followers increased to 164.
 
         ARISS Upcoming Events     

• September 18: The school, Avellaneda Ikastetxea, in Sodupe, Spain will host an ARISS contact utilizing the ARISS telebridge ground station in South Africa to relay communications between the school and ARISS ham radio station on the ISS. Chris Cassidy will support the contact.

• September 2: Chris Cassidy installed and set up the first element of the ARISS Next Generation Radio System--the Interoperable Radio System (IORS)--in the ISS Columbus module. The IORS is now in operation and consists of the MultiVoltage Power Supply, a specially modified JVC Kenwood transceiver, and associated cables. The ARISS team spent five years developing the IORS, which replaces an intermittent Ericsson radio and packet module. With time, more ARISS equipment will be launched for other ISS modules, and will support different experiments.  ARISS distributed a news release, picked up by many news outlets, sharing that the IORS was activated initially in cross-band repeater mode as a relay station allowing hams on Earth to make radio contacts with one another. Thousands of hams quickly began interfacing with the new ISS system, enjoying the new communications option. A ham radio operator in Mauritius wrote: “Patrice and I had a superb contact via the ARISS FM repeater a few minutes ago. Fine signals both ways on VHF and UHF. Really nice to have the repeater on the air!” 
  
• Next week the ARISS team will use the new system for an ARISS school contact. ARISS thanks major sponsors NASA and ISS National Lab for supporting the ARISS team!  The team is already shared ideas for new experiments to try.   
  

• September 2: A successful ARISS contact with Chris Cassidy was sponsored by the KMO Kolska Wyspa (a club of teenage explorers) for its students and those from other schools in Kolo, Poland: Adam Mickiewicz Primary School No. 2, Kazimierz Wielki Secondary School, and Martinuary Insurgents Primary School.  Students, ages 12 to 19, and staff gathering at the Mickiewicz school totaled 29, while 61 viewed the livestream YouTube, and 42 watched live video provided by the British Amateur Television Club (BATC). BATC viewers could also see video of Martin Diggins handling the radios at his Australian ARISS radio telebridge station, relaying Cassidy’s voice and the Polish youths’ voices. Cassidy answered 13 student questions. Two TV stations and a photo agency were on hand covering the day’s activities. The KMO club leaders, some from area ham radio clubs, work with teachers and students promoting EarthKAM and MoonKam activities in cooperation with Copernicus Science Centre in Warsaw.  The Wielki school is known for its outstanding robotics program. Younger students studied space, handled ham radio equipment, and regularly updated a bulletin board showcasing the latest news from ESA, NASA, and the Sally Ride Science program. KMO students learned to solder, then assembled robots, learned to control the robots, and older students moved on to bigger robots. After participating in EarthKam, they put on a show called “The Earth from the Sky.”

• August 24: The Queensland Government Department of Education (DoE) in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia sponsored an ARISS contact with Chris Cassidy for the 4th annual i-Educate Conference, this year with educators online. The conference, considered the premier professional development technological conference for all Queensland educators, is led by the DoE IT branch. During the contact, a group of 30 students and staff from three schools (Mount Crosby State School, Runcorn Heights State School and Victoria Point State High School) assembled in a DoE office building and Cassidy answered 11 questions from the 13- and 14-year olds. Online for the ARISS contact were 265 educators while 69 others listened on EchoLink and IRLP (an online amateur radio audio conference service). The IT branch interacts with all Queensland schools providing guidance in implementing technology for student learning in classes.  

• July 17: ARISS balloon race coordinator Joanne Michael in Culver City, CA, was invited by a race participant in Pasco, WA to give a Zoom talk to members of the Prosser Conservatory of Theatre for Children. She discussed the science of radio, showing examples of a radio receiver, transmitter, and antenna, and what they do and how ARISS radio contacts work. She explained differences and similarities of sound waves and radio waves and something these students could easily relate to, how to stop microphone feedback problems! Taking part were 20 students ages 8 to 17, 3 formal educators, and 1 informal educator.

• July 17: Cosmonaut Ivan Vagner supported an ARISS contact with students in the Gargarin from Space study program who were participating in the 9th International Aerospace School summer event.  The coordination of activities is based out of Ufa, in the UN Sultanova Republic of Bashkortostan, Russia. Utilizing social distancing, 15 college students, 2 professors, and 2 adults were part of the ARISS contact.

• August 7: Senior Education Manager Dan Barstow at ISS National Lab asked ARISS educator Melissa Pore to invite two students to be recorded for a NASA video downlink. Bishop O’Connell High School had an ARISS contact two years ago and students continue to study radio and space.  High schoolers Mira and Will were selected for the downlink because of design studies they’ve done, and they could ask Chris Cassidy about these. Mira enquired about future automated space vehicles that might result in less training needed to go to space. Will requested advice about a prototype space pillow that was designed for microgravity. 

   ARISS Upcoming Events        

• September 10: Students at College Raymond Sirot in Gueux, France are a go for their ARISS radio contact with Chris Cassidy.
• September 18: Students from Avellaneda Ikastetxea School in Sodupe, Spain are scheduled to have an ARISS contact with Chris Cassidy.
  

• August 18: Kathy Lamont, ARISS-US Education Committee Chair, reported that she networked on behalf of ARISS with the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) Program Manager of Aerospace Education. CAP education leaders already knew about ARISS after visiting the ARISS exhibit at the Space Education Explorers Conference in Houston. They’ve now added ARISS to their online posting of educational resources for CAP Aerospace Education Members. They wrote, “[We] really like what the ARISS organization does! Anything you want us to post, we will.” CAP’s educational resources list is at: https://www.gocivilairpatrol.com/programs/aerospace-education/for-educators/aehome (ARISS posting is halfway down the page). The ARISS web site URL is listed under the title “Amateur Radio on the International Space Station Educational Content” and ARISS’s YouTube URL of videos is listed under the title, “Educational Videos.” 

• August 13: Oregon Charter Academy (ORCA), an all-virtual public school in Portland, OR has been educating students with a focus on STEM for 15 years. The academy’s ARISS contact is scheduled for December. The online Monthly Portland, a magazine highlighting Portland’s culture and events, posted an article titled “Students Reach for the Stars.” It covered ORCA’s curriculum tied to ARISS and students’ field trips to area university labs and science museums. The story described science experiments done by students at home while watching ORCA’s broadcasts. Principal Dan Vasen was quoted talking about a partnership he set up with JPL Mobile Museum’s RADIOS (Remote and Distant Interactive Online Sessions) to engage ORCA’s 350 K-12 students in monthly virtual STEM enrichment, which includes content from Space Center Houston that JPL distributes. ORCA will share these programs with several other schools and government officials via Zoom and ORCA’s Facebook page. Vasen said, “Students who participate in this free program get curriculum integrations focused on STEM and NASA education all year.” The story’s author wrote: “Through innovative partnerships with NASA, students can also communicate with the stars—or at least those living among the stars at the International Space Station. Interest in space has never been higher, and ORCA is fueling their dreams of science careers.” The article is at: https://www.pdxmonthly.com/sponsored/2020/08/students-reach-for-the-stars

• June 24: ARISS-US Education Committee team member Melissa Pore, a teacher at Arlington, VA’s Bishop O’Connell High School, has been scheduling online STEM aerospace speakers for her students who enjoy space and ARISS-related studies. The summer activities maintain the youths’ enthusiasm. The first two speakers attracted 20, and then 30 students and 2 educators. The first speaker, Caitlyn Singam, a systems engineer and bioengineer, inspired students about NASA’s Dragonfly Mission to Titan. The second speaker, Karen Rucker, a Ball Aerospace electrical engineer, focused the students on space communications such as ARISS and SCaN, 3-D printed antennas, and analog space missions leading to future missions to Mars. A side note—Ms. Singam and Ms. Rucker are both amateur radio operators.  

• August 19:  Students from virtual summer camps sponsored by Kopernik Observatory & Science Center in Vestal, NY had a successful ARISS contact with Chris Cassidy. Many more details will be available for next week’s report.

• August 24:  The Queensland Government Department of Education in Brisbane, Australia sponsored an ARISS contact for students as a part of the online i-Educate conference for educators. The conference is considered Queensland’s premier professional development technological conference. ARISS team members will have pulled together the outcomes by next week.

 
         ARISS Upcoming Events     

• September 2:  Students at KMO Kolska Wysp in Koło, Poland will have an ARISS radio contact with Chris Cassidy.

• August 8: The ARISS-Russia team reported that an ARISS radio contact took place in Aznakaevo in the Republic of Tatarstan. The young people involved had been participating in the About Gagarin from Space youth program and 20 questions were answered by cosmonaut Ivan Vagner. Eighty people attended the event, 50 of which were students. Here is an example of one of the questions students asked: “Do magnetic storms affect the radio communications with the ground?”
  

• August 4: ARISS Educator Melissa Pore assisted with three lesson activities related to space communications and ARISS during two of the two-hour sessions for the online DC Space Camp. Some of the types of things she helped the youth understand were radio signals, line-of-sight radio propagation, Morse code, how to point antennas, and building equipment for radio communications. The camp youth were taking part in many lessons led by the PSC SCaN team about a number of NASA’s projects. Thirty youths, including Arabella Trump, tied in from the surrounding areas and they ranged from second through sixth grade school levels.
  

         ARISS Upcoming Events     
 

• August 19:  Staff and students from summer camps at Kopernik Observatory & Science Center in Vestal, NY, are finishing preparations and lessons for their ARISS radio contact with Chris Cassidy. ARISS is preparing a news release to distribute.
  

 

• August 24:  The Department of Education-Queensland Government in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia will host an ARISS contact for youth.

• July 29: An article appeared in the Ramona Sentinel about Ramona (CA) Lutheran Christian School students’ preparations for an ARISS contact in mid-October. Beginning August 17, the school will offer a course called Robotics and Amateur Radio Fundamentals through the STEM clubs. The course builds on STEM lessons taught this spring related to ARISS. If the school postpones its opening, teachers hope to get a waiver for small groups of social-distanced students to do the hands-on activities. They will learn how to code robots and be mentored by the local radio club, Ramona Outback Amateur Radio Service, in a number of hands-on radio activities. The newspaper story also explained the ARISS program, its focus on STEM learning, and its affiliation with NASA, ARRL, and AMSAT. The lead teacher had traveled to ARRL Hq in Connecticut in 2019 for a week-long Teachers Institute to learn to lead activities that utilize amateur radio as a STEM-teaching tool in the classroom.    
  

  

• Aug 4-5:  Space and radio enthusiasts around the globe enjoyed a Russian Slow Scan TV (SSTV) session carried out using the Moscow Aviation Institute’s MAI-75 experiment on the ISS. Images featured things related to Russian space and aviation history. Participants used free software from the internet to download and post 2,830 images on the ARISS SSTV Gallery web pages:  https://www.spaceflightsoftware.com/ARISS_SSTV/.  US participants were very pleased including one writer, Beth in Texas, who said:  “I received an image during a pass today. It was a low elevation pass, just 7 degrees. The next pass is a high elevation one. Fingers crossed for a good image!”  ESA Education has promoted ARISS SSTV for a month after creating and posting an online video on how to download images. ESA Education’s David Honess wrote: “At one point there were 98 concurrent users downloading images from the Goonhilly Web SDR! I am really pleased…the views of our video jumped from 3,000 to 9,600 the last few days!  And over 50 comments were posted, which are all nice and positive.”  An ISS Fan Club web page administrator said she noticed a big increase in people who posted notes about it being the first time they downloaded SSTV images.
  

• Ongoing:  In the past six months, the ARISS team has been developing an electronics teaching kit focused on radio technology targeted to elementary through high school students. Hands-on lesson plans to use with items in the kit cover basic electronics and communications concepts: Understanding Waves and Wave Propagation, Series and Parallel Circuits (and electronics understanding), Codes and Ciphers, and a Software Defined Radio (also known as the ARISS Radio Pi) that is a plug and play system.

 

• The latter includes a Raspberry Pi and software, both specially developed by ARISS (the software is embedded on a micro-SD card for the Pi), and an RTL-SDR dongle that plugs into the Pi and attaches to the provided antenna. The ARISS Radio Pi will enable students to investigate radio signals across the radio spectrum and to track and listen to satellites, including the ISS.
  

 

• The first batch of kits is nearing completion and then will be introduced to students at several schools.
  

ARISS Social Media
 
Facebook in July 2020

Twitter: At the end of July 2020, ARISS Twitter followers totaled 12,941, a gain of 176 over June.
  
Instagram: As of July 31, 2020, total Instagram Followers increased to 157.
 
 
        ARISS Upcoming Events     

• August 21: Students from summer camps sponsored by Kopernik Observatory & Science Center in Vestal, NY will speak with Chris Cassidy during an ARISS contact.
  

• August 14-15: Kathy Lamont, chair of the ARISS-US Education Committee and a Civil Air Patrol (CAP) Aerospace Education Member will attend sessions of the virtual CAP 2020 National Conference on a variety of CAP educational resource materials that can be used by teachers and students.