• December 26: A professor who also manages the amateur radio station at the University of Arizona (U of A) had told students about the December ARISS SSTV downlinks. One student built a radio system so he could receive high quality images, but had a day of system failures. The next morning at 3 AM, the student and professor went to the U of A observatory roof to try the system. The student’s downloads were no better. He went home and developed a receiver chain; it included amplifiers and filters. His determination paid off; he began receiving great images that celebrated ARISS’s 20 years of success. 

  

• December 2020: An ARISS follower and ham radio operator enjoyed engaging students from the Kamehameha High School Science Club in Maui, Hawaii in space communications.  The high school students tracked satellites and were interested in ARISS activities.

         Upcoming Events  

• January 13: Shigagakuen Junior & Senior High School in Higashioumi, Japan is scheduled for an ARISS school contact. Shannon Walker will support the radio contact.

 

• January 20: Students at Hisagi Junior High School inZushi, Japan will have an ARISS radio contact with Shannon Walker supporting.

 

• January 21: Maine Regional School in Kennebunk, Maine is hosting an ARISS contact. Mike Hopkins will support this radio contact

• December 15:  The Oregon Charter Academy in Mill City, OR, held its ARISS radio contact for students to talk to Shannon Walker.  She answered 20 of their questions. Students at home were connected to the radio contact through ARISS Multi-point Telebridge Via Amateur Radio. ARISS’s volunteer at his ham station in Queensland, Australia relayed the audio between Walker at the ISS ham station and students.  Over 2,000 of the school’s youth viewed the event live and had been studying communications and lessons on space from Space Center Houston for many weeks.  KPTV-23 in Portland ran a story during its news broadcast and KGW-TV featured the radio contact in a news clip and an online article. KYAC FM broadcasted the live audio feed, and the online SpaceRef included a short piece in its daily status report on NASA.  The ARISS YouTube Channel posted the school’s video of the contact. The KGW-TV link is: https://www.kgw.com/article/news/education/oregon-charter-academy-students-interview-nasa-astronaut-on-international-space-station/283-73bed430-aac5-45a4-b575-bcd0e4421107
  

 

• December 24-31: An ARISS Slow Scan TV (SSTV) session celebrated ARISS’s 20 years of successes through having cosmonauts downlink 12 different images from ARISS’s history files. The first day of the session caused ARISS to reach a 100K milestone: as images were posted at the online ARISS SSTV Gallery (http://www.spaceflightsoftware.com/ARISS/SSTV/) the total of all images posted since the first-ever SSTV session surpassed 100,000! People who are space enthusiasts, students, educators, and hams find these sessions to be great fun, downloading images with a ham radio or phone app to store on smartphones or computers before posting to the Gallery.  The ARISS team will know soon the final count of participants and downloaded images during this session.  Two quotes that enthralled youth participants sent are:  A) My first SSTV image. I'm 13 years old.  B) I'm 17 years old and the youngest private pilot license holder from India. I'm an amateur radio enthusiast.
  

• December 23: The ARISS program was featured in an article in the Los Angeles Times. The article led with the excitement of having ham radio onboard the ISS from the astronaut’s point of view. Doug Wheelock said he quickly saw ARISS as a conduit to companionship with regular people on earth, “It allowed me to...just reach out to humanity down there…. It became my emotional, and a really visceral, connection to the planet.” The writer interviewed and quoted Kenneth Ransom, Rosalie White, and other ARISS volunteers on ARISS’s many aspects including among other things, schools and what the average person of various ages thinks of ARISS contacts. The link to the article is: https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-12-23/ham-radio-and-astronauts  Many media outlets picked up the article, including MSN, Yahoo News, Reddit, Physics Everywhere, Vectors Journal, American Institute of Physics (at phys.org), Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette, the Dubuque Iowa’s Telegraph-Herald, and various outlets specializing in space news.
  

• December 15: In the last report, the Tecumseh High School’s ARISS contact of December 4 was described. Since then, the lead educator has tracked the views of the video of the contact on the school Facebook page and three other web sites.  The total views reached 10,000. He reported that this number didn’t include views of stories run on area TV stations and in area newspapers.
  

ARISS Social Media
 
Facebook in December 2020

 *Also, the total of the Best Reach number and the Best Likes number for October through December nearly doubled over the previous quarter.
 
Twitter: As of December 31, 2020, ARISS Twitter followers totaled 14,180, a gain of 381 over November.
 
Instagram: As of December 31, 2020, Instagram followers increased to 224 from November.
 
YouTube Members: As of December 31, 2020, there are 820 YouTube members.
 
 
         Upcoming Events    
 

• January 6:  The Oswaldo Guayasamín School of Basic Education in Puerto Ayora, Santa Cruz Island, Ecuador has been scheduled for an ARISS contact with Victor Glover. Eighteen schools on four of the Galapagos Islands have been studying space and the environment with the Puerto Ayora school and will listen to the contact online.
  

 

• January 13: An ARISS radio contact has been scheduled for Shigagakuen Junior & Senior High School in Higashioumi, Japan. Shannon Walker will support the radio contact.

• December 4: Students at Tecumseh High School in Tecumseh, OK (some on site and some at home)  were thrilled by their ARISS contact. Shannon Walker answered 20 questions for an attentive audience of 200 including the Tecumseh mayor and the Tecumseh Public Schools superintendent while the assistant superintendent served as moderator.  Lead teacher Bill Crow declared, “It was awesome!  We had parents crying for joy!!” Video was streamed by the school for students (3,003 live views) and by the area ham radio club for the public (1,500 views). Three days later another 1,600 views had viewed the contact.  KFOR-TV, KAUT-TV and KGFF radio ran clips of the contact during their news shows, and Countrywide News and the Shawnee News Star covered the story.  The school’s Electronics and Amateur Radio class students of all levels learn basic circuitry using Snap Circuits, build simple circuits creating movement or sound design and progress to complex electrical circuits. Younger students learn basic coding using Bee Bots, Osmo systems, and Code-a-Pillars. Two students studied for and earned their ham radio license and have enjoyed talking over the air around the world and building satellite antennas in order to make ham satellite contacts.    
  

• December 4:  The Scuola Secondaria di I grado Anna Frank in Pistoia, Italy hosted an ARISS Multi-point Telebridge Contact via Amateur Radio with Victor Glover. He answered 18 questions from students, some at school, some at home due to Covid-19.  120 people attended the event along with reporters from WebTV TVL and Radio Pistoia Web; live video was streamed and posted on the web sites. The contact was livestreamed resulting in 144 live views. A Milano teacher with her ham radio license and 15 fifth graders stood in their schoolyard, listening on her radio, and a student from Sri Lanka translated the English into Italian for the others. 
  

• December 7: Students at Athlone Community College in Athlone, Ireland participated in an ARISS contact with Shannon Walker. The event was streamed live to 1,200 students and staff in the school who were observing social distance in multiple classrooms. An additional 400 YouTube viewers watched live as students asked Walker 20 questions. Students viewed a videotaped message from the Irish Minister, and a representative came from the Education and Training Board. Pre-recorded videos were played of Dr. Norah Patten, an Irish aeronautical engineer, author and award-winning STEM advocate and Alan Giltinan, astrophysicist at Blackrock Castle Observatory.  Reporters came from two national TV stations, two national and three regional radio stations, and two national and three regional newspapers. The event was livestreamed for all students and staff and 400 across the world. By three days later, 2,000 more people had viewed the stream. A two-minute news clip produced by the Irish National Broadcaster RTE aired during prime-time evening news; it is at:  https://www.facebook.com/rtenews/videos/1049040025601236/   
  

 

• December 3:   A successful ARISS contact was completed for students at Amur State University in Blagoveshchensk, Russia.  Sergey Ryzhikov answered questions from 11 young people. The school had been leading a class of students in lessons from the “About Gagarin From Space” program.
  

• December 9: An ARISS contact was hosted for students at Southwestern State University in Kursk, Russia. Sergey Kud-Sverchkov supported the contact. Students participate in the About Gagarin from Space program. Two examples of the many questions students asked were:
  

         What research is not suitable for an astronaut?
         Do you have a favorite flower-plant-insect-animal from experiments on the ISS?

• December 2: The Moscow Aviation Institute scheduled an SSTV session tentatively for December 1-2, and historical images began to be downlinked on the 2nd.  Images were of “Soyuz crews of the past” and thus far, 398 hams, teachers, space enthusiasts, and the general public have downloaded 1,041 images. These are posted on the ARISS SSTV Gallery at: www.spaceflightsoftware.com/ARISS_SSTV/.
  

• December 13: An ARISS contact was scheduled for students at the Institute of Physics and Chemistry of the National Research University of Mordovia State University, N.P. Ogarev, in Saransk, Russia.  Students are part of the “About Gagarin from Space” program.
  

• November:  A previous report covered the shipment of boxes to schools of the ARISS Radio Experimenters Kit and beta-version hardcopies of the accompanying handbook. The kit is mentioned on the ISS National Lab Space Station Explorers web page at: https://www.spacestationexplorers.org/educational-programs/ariss-radioexperiment/. Here is a list of schools that received the kits.
  

1. John F. Kennedy High School - Denver CO
   
2. John F. Kennedy High School - Granada Hills, CA
3. John F. Kennedy Middle School - Woburn MA
4. Codman Academy Charter School - Dorchester, MA
5. Young Men’s Leadership Academy at Kennedy Middle School - Grand Prairie TX
   

 

• December 4: The Oregon Charter Academy (ORCA) hosted their 3rd in a series of ORCA NASA Radios Events. These lessons are tied to the school’s ARISS contact scheduled for December 15. During this lesson, titled “Houston, Let’s Solve a Problem,” 22 students were presented with a scenario where they are on a space mission when an explosion occurs. They had to work together to resolve the problem, save their craft and crew, and return to Earth.
  

 

• December 9:  Victor Glover and four schools sponsored by the Turkish State Meteorological Service had a successful ARISS contact. Schools were in these cities: Yenimahalle, Keçiören, and two schools are in Gölbaşı.  Most students were home, linked in online (150), and 15 were on site. Media reporters were from CNN Turkey and nationwide newspapers.
  

          ARISS Social Media
 
          Facebook in November 2020

        Twitter: As of November 30, 2020, ARISS Twitter followers totaled 13,799, a gain of 180   over October.
 
        Instagram: As of November 30, 2020, Instagram followers increased to 197 over October.
 
        YouTube Members: As of November 30, 2020, there are 791 YouTube members.
 
 
         Upcoming Events    

• December 15:  Students at Oregon Charter Academy in Mill City, OR, have an ARISS contact scheduled with Shannon Walker.

 

• January 5-15:  Times for ARISS contacts are being considered for the Oswaldo Guayasamín School of Basic Education in Puerto Ayora, Santa Cruz Island, Ecuador and for Shigagakuen Junior & Senior High School in Higashioumi, Japan.

• November 12: The ISS National Laboratory compiled a 44-page report called 20 Years of Student Experiments on the ISS.  The report highlighted ARISS in a number of different sections.  In the first few pages, the introduction section titled “Scope of this Study” calls out ARISS, stating it was one of the very first operational experiments. Farther in, a full page is devoted to ARISS and delves into details all about the program.  Another full page describes some of ARISS’s major metrics for US schools.  A selection of other ARISS metrics is sprinkled throughout the report. The link for downloading the report is: https://www.issnationallab.org/research-on-the-iss/reports/20-years-of-student-experiments-using-the-iss/
  

• November 14:  SCaN, JPL, and ARISS put together a presentation that was given at the Classroom in the Sky virtual event.  ARISS-US Education Committee member Melissa Pore represented ARISS. Attendees at this session totaled 35, with 75 more educators having registered to watch the recorded session. The “STEMinar” attracted educators from around the world to learn about teaching strategies and tools for many areas of STEM and/or aerospace and the related careers.
  

• November 16: ARISS volunteer Charlie Sufana gave a special presentation via Zoom to the Lake County Amateur Radio Club (LCARC) in Lake County, Indiana. This group supported the very first ARISS contact, which was carried out December 21, 2020 at the Luther Burbank School. Sufana surprised club members, honoring them with a wide variety of photos and facts from their having supported over the years many Shuttle Amateur Radio EXperiment contacts and ARISS contacts. 12 LCARC members were social distanced at the clubhouse for his talk while 4 others attended virtually.  Others members watched the recording.
  

• November 22: Charlie Sufana set up a second Zoom meeting, this one as a reunion to celebrate the 20-year anniversary of the first ARISS school contact ever made, which was at the Luther Burbank School on December 21, 2020 in Burbank, IL.  Sufana had invited all students, faculty, and ARISS team members that he had contact information on, and asked them to invite other students they have kept touch with. Sufana showed the original contact video to the 24 attending the Zoom reunion. Attending the Zoom reunion were students who made the contact, students who supported the contact (e.g. generated questions), teachers, ham volunteers, and family members. Here are notes and quotes:
  
• After the contact, at least 3 adults who attended went on to earn their ham licenses, including lead teacher, Rita Wright.
  
• The reunion and the showing of the contact video elicited many emotions—some choked up while talking and tears flowing down several members’ faces.
• Principal Bob Mocek said the ARISS event at Burbank 20 years ago “Was the best thing he ever did as an educator in his 40 years in education.”
• Student Brittany Lukasik had been in first grade, the youngest student to ask astronaut Bill Shepherd a question.  Brittany and her Mom attended the reunion.  Her mom said that prior to the try-outs to be selected for asking questions, Brittany really wanted to do this and was motivated to get her voice booming, through coaching and determination. Britanny said, “The ARISS experience influenced my life.”  She received her B.S. degree in Nursing and is now a nurse in Florida.
• Teacher Maureen O’Brien stated that, “We did so much in the classroom leading up to the contact.  We were given the creative freedom to develop lessons based on our grade level and subject matter.  The teachers were engaged at all grade levels (K-8) and all study subjects.”
• Teacher Susan McNichols said: “I pulled out the scrapbook on the Burbank ARISS experience and I still get emotional about it 20 years later.”  In 2012, Susan organized an ARISS contact for the Liberty Junior High School with astronaut Don Petit.
  
• Many students attending the reunion are now in STEAM careers and Sufana made a record of these. Several of the students moved to the Space Coast and work there as a CPA, nurse, insurance broker, and as a government contracts specialist for the Navy. 
  

  

• November 12-13: The lead article in the widely circulated southern Maine newspaper, The Weekly Sentinel, touted the upcoming ARISS radio contact in January for Sea Road School in Kennebunk, Maine. The school serves over 300 third, fourth, and fifth-grade students and the article described the students’ STEM- and radio-related preparatory lessons. The link is: http://www.theweeklysentinel.com/
  

 

• A second media outlet highlighted the Sea Road School, also. The Seacoast Online news publication’s article titled “Sea Road Students to Radio Orbiting Astronauts” described students’ growing excitement for their upcoming contact. The story covered the celebration of ARISS’s 20 years of successes on the ISS, as well.  The article is at: https://www.seacoastonline.com/story/lifestyle/2020/11/11/sea-road-students-radio-orbiting-astronauts/6251386002/
  

• November 16: ARISS team member Darrell Warren gave a presentation to Red Hill Lutheran School faculty in Tustin, CA. The teachers are interested in hosting an ARISS contact in the future and 25 of them attended the meeting, along with the principal and 3 staff members.  Warren, a retired schoolteacher, stressed that ARISS-related topics can engage every student in the school in hands-on activities and can involve all subjects. He gave examples of how to do this. He said, “My experience with students is that most are more than excited even when listening to other schools’ ARISS contacts, once they understand a real astronaut is flying across the sky during the contact. Especially if the listening youth are holding radios and manipulating antennas.” 

 

• November 13:  A WBNG-TV team in Binghamton taped a video and posted a story that related ARISS activities to the SpaceX November 15th launch.  The news team had gone to Kopernik Observatory and Science Center in Vestal, NY to interview the head of the Center, ARISS educator Drew Deskur, about the Binghamton area’s ties to space.  Deskur talked about Kopernik’s involvement with ARISS, related education activities, and ham radio.https://wbng.com/2020/11/13/kopernik-reacts-to-spacex-launch/
  

 
 
         Upcoming Events

• December 3: Amur State University students in Blagoveshchensk, Russia will take part in an ARISS contact with Sergey Ryzhikov.  
  

 

• December 4: Students at Scuola Secondaria di l grado Anna Frank in Pistoia, Italy are ready for their ARISS contact with Victor Glover.

 

• December 4: Tecumseh High School students, especially those in the Electronics and Amateur Radio Class and the area’s STEAM Center in Tecumseh, OK are well prepared for their ARISS contact with Shannon Walker.  

 

• December 9: Amur State University students in Blagoveshchensk, Russia will take part in an ARISS contact with Sergey Kud-Sverchkov.  

 

• November 12: ARISS-US Education Committee Chair and educator Kathy Lamont gave a presentation titled “How to Talk with an Astronaut 250 Miles Above You” at the annual (online) Virginia Association of Science Teachers Conference.  The presentation, aimed at K-12 educators, covered details about the free ARISS program for schools that allows students to ask questions of the ISS crews. Viewers heard about ARISS’s proposal process, how to integrate the ISS and ARISS into curriculum, and a little on how the ARISS amateur radio system works. The presentation will be available online for many teachers to view during the next six months.
  

• November 14:  SCaN, JPL, and ARISS presented at the Classroom in the Sky Virtual Event, with ARISS-US Education Committee member Melissa Pore representing ARISS.  More details will be available next week.

 

• November 6:   ARISS-US Education Committee member Joanne Michael launched a pico balloon, call sign KM6BWB-1, with a ham radio payload that could be tracked online. She sent social media notifications to 1,500 students in her Wiseburn Unified School District about following the balloon launch.  The event was part of the school district’s “Day of Science” activities. She hosted a YouTube video during the launch, talking about the balloon’s progress, and a YouTube video lesson the following day.  The second video guided students in their tracking of the balloon and led them into discerning what the telemetry was telling them about the balloon’s progress.  The URL of the second video is: https://youtu.be/4QqL9b4l-BQ.
  

• November 6: An article about the new ARISS radio system and ARISS’s 20 years of continuous operation on the ISS was in the Polish magazine, Swiat Radio, supported by the national amateur radio organization in Poland.  ARISS team members in Poland helped the writer with story details.  The magazine’s regular contents include items on amateur radio, professional radio and related hardware. 

 

• November 8: The European Space Agency (ESA) posted on its Facebook page a video moderated by Thomas Pesquet about ESA educational programs coordinated in France. Pesquet speaks in French for this video, titled “ESERO France, Always more Space for Teachers and their Students.”  He covers space-related education activities—including ARISS—supported by CNES (National Center for Space Studies) and its partners.  The URL is at (the ARISS portion is 2 minutes 55 seconds in): https://esero.fr/actualites/alpha-thomas-pesquet-lance-les-defis-scolaires/
  

• November 7: The November issue of the Quarter Century Wireless Association’s monthly publication, QCWA Journal, carried a one-page article on the new ARISS radio system on the ISS. The story included what ham radio modes are offered for schools, hams, and the general public to engage in, and quoted Rosalie White highlighting ARISS’s 20 years of continuous amateur radio operations on the ISS, and future initiatives. QCWA has about 10,000 members.

 
 
         Upcoming Events
 

• November 16: ARISS team member Darrell Warren will make an ARISS presentation at the Red Hill Lutheran School faculty meeting in Tustin, CA.
  

 

• November 22: ARISS Technical Mentor Charlie Sufana set up a Zoom meeting to celebrate the 20-year anniversary of first ARISS school contact ever made, which was at the Luther Burbank Elementary School in Burbank, IL.  Sufana invited all students, faculty, and ARISS team members that he had contact information on, and asked them to invite others they stay in touch with.

 

• December: Due to limitations on volunteer crew support, ARISS school contacts are delayed until early December after Crew 1 arrives at the ISS and completes orientation. Two schools, Scuola Secondaria di I grado Anna Frank in Pistoia, Italy and Tecumseh High School in Tecumseh, OK  are tentatively scheduled for the first few days of December.  The ARISS radio is in APRS packet mode and ham operators are interacting with the ISS through ARISS.

• October 31:  The Villages Daily Sun newspaper, published for the Villages Retirement Community in central Florida, ran an article featuring ARISS hardware team member Ed Krome.   The story highlighted the ARISS program and Krome’s outstanding development work on the Multi-Voltage Power Supply, part of the ARISS Interoperable Radio System on the ISS. Krome is a snowbird in the Villages. The newspaper has 55,700 subscribers and the article is at: http://www.thevillagesdailysun.com/news/villages/villager-built-power-supply-for-space-station/article_d0aa5c2a-1b87-11eb-b95c-5b372f36d243.html

• October 16: Alan Johnston, AMSAT Educational Relations Vice President and Villanova University professor led ARISS educator Melissa Pore’s Bishop O’Connell High School Amateur Radio Club members in two October workshops. The two educators helped students, socially distanced in their Arlington, VA meeting room, in experimenting with the new ARISS Radio Pi unit and doing some testing of it. Students wearing spacesuits showed their enthusiasm for spaceflight. 

 

• November 5:  Frank Bauer, Rosalie White, and ARISS-US Education Committee lead Kathy Lamont met via Webex with a group of staff members from SCaN to discuss working together in additional ways to further enhance space science education and outreach through ARISS. Also, Bauer reported on the new ARISS Radio Kit and summarized ARISS’s initial plans for celebrating 20 years of continuous amateur radio operations aboard the ISS.

 

• November 8:  Australian ARISS volunteer and telebridge radio station operator James Anthony (Tony) Hutchison received the prestigious Order of Australia medal at the annual investiture ceremony in Government House.  Due to Covid-19, each person earning the medal gathered with a very small group of friends for each award presentation and the entire ceremony was streamed live. Recipients are named in the 2020 Queen’s Birthday Honours List and Tony’s citation called out his dedicated service to amateur radio in amateur satellites and amateur radio space communication. He had supported ham radio contacts with Mir, SAREX (Shuttle Amateur Radio EXperiment) and ARISS. He’s helped 65 ARISS schools prepare for their radio contacts and utilized his ham radio telebridge station to facilitate 58 ARISS school contacts.

 

• November 3: Recent fires around Santa Rosa, CA, temporarily took out of service ARISS’s telebridge station at Santa Rosa Junior College that had supported years of ARISS school contacts. ARISS leader John Kludt has vetted a new volunteer and his amateur radio station to be an additional ARISS telebridge station. The ham, located in Portland, OR will provide communications for ARISS school contacts that utilize ISS passes over the West Coast.

         ARISS Social Media
 
         Facebook in October 2020

 Twitter: As of October 31. 2020, ARISS Twitter followers totaled 13,619, with a monthly gain of nearly 300.
 
Instagram: As of October 31, 2020, Instagram followers had increased to 184.
 
         Upcoming Events

• November 12: ARISS-US Education Committee Chair and educator Kathy Lamont is scheduled to give a talk at the online Virginia Association of Science Teachers Conference.  Her presentation is titled “How to Talk with an Astronaut 250 Miles Above You.”  

 

• November 14:  SCaN, JPL, and ARISS will present at the Classroom in the Sky Virtual Event, with ARISS-US Education Committee member Melissa Pore representing ARISS.

 

• November 16: ARISS team member Darrell Warren will make an ARISS presentation at the Red Hill Lutheran School faculty meeting in Tustin, CA.

 

• November 22: ARISS Technical Mentor Charlie Sufana set up a Zoom meeting to celebrate the 20-year anniversary of the first ARISS school contact ever made, which was at the Luther Burbank Elementary School in Burbank, IL.  Sufana invited all students, faculty, and ARISS team members that he had contact information on, and asked them to invite other students they communicate with.

 

• December: Due to limitations on volunteer crew support, ARISS school contacts are delayed until early December after Crew 1 arrives at the ISS and completes orientation. Two schools, Scuola Secondaria di I grado Anna Frank in Pistoia, Italy and Tecumseh High School in Tecumseh, OK  are tentatively scheduled for ARISS contacts for the first few days of December.  Currently, the ARISS radio is in APRS packet mode and ham operators are interacting with the ISS through the radio.
  

• October 26-28:  A group of ARISS team members took part in the three-day ISS National Lab Education Summit.  On Day 1, Space Station Explorers Senior Education Manager Dan Barstow gave a presentation titled “20 Years of STEM Education—the ISS National Lab Report.  His talk highlighted several of the Space Station Explorers programs, and one was ARISS. Barstow related a small amount of ARISS’s long history, described how it enhances youth education, and displayed some of ARISS’s metrics on engaging youth.  Frank Bauer shared additional comments on ARISS activities and plans such as this past summer’s balloon race using amateur radio payloads and how ARISS transformed its school contacts in ways that safeguarded students from Covid.  Rosalie White added that ARISS is not just K-12; colleges and universities often host ARISS contacts with the students mentoring elementary schools.  She thanked Barstow for describing ARISS as “having the power to combine ham radio and space exploration into a magical elixir to engage students.”  Day 3 sessions focused on upcoming activities allowing students to engage with the ISS.  At another session, Barstow introduced the Student Mission Control project, an initiative where students can receive live ISS telemetry data in a mission control setting, and then analyze and interpret the data. Barstow described the ARISS contribution to this initiative, where on-board telemetry data acquired by sensors attached to an ARISS-developed Raspberry Pi computer can be transmitted from the ARISS on-board radio system and directly received on the ground and evaluated by the Mission Control students.
  

• October 26-27: The first ARISS Radio Kit and a hardcopy of the beta version of the ARISS Radio Kit Handbook were prepared and shipped to a school in Texas.  Over the next several months, ARISS will hold periodic sessions with the school’s educators to receive feedback on how to improve the kit and handbook based on their experience using them.  Eight more schools will receive the kit and handbook soon.  Frank Bauer thanked John Kludt as team leader, Melissa Pore for the lessons and most of the documentation, and Alan Johnston for leading the ARISS Radio Pi development. 
  

• October 30: In preparation for their upcoming ARISS contact, the Oregon Charter Academy (ORCA) will be presenting an event titled ORCA NASA / ARISS RADIOS #2. This is the second in a series of several space education assemblies for students in the K-12 grades. This event features a Space Center Houston interactive presentation live streamed from Houston titled “When Home is 250 miles up! - Life on the International Space Station” where the students will discover how the astronauts eat, exercise and conduct science experiments and perform many other daily tasks while in orbit. Serving as moderator in Oregon will be ORCA Principal Dan Vasen.
  

         Upcoming Events
 

• November 12: ARISS educator Kathy Lamont is scheduled to give a talk at the online Virginia Association of Science Teachers Conference.  Her presentation is titled “How to Talk with an Astronaut 250 Miles Above You.”  
  

 

• October 23: 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.

• October 22: Frank Bauer gave a presentation on ARISS at the virtual 2020 ISS Research & Development Conference for the session titled “20 Years of STEM Experiments on the ISS.” He emphasized ARISS’s positive impact on students of enabling them to engage with the ISS, the value of hands-on STEM learning experiences through ARISS, and gave just a few of the many examples of how ARISS has inspired students of all ages.
  

• October 20: Drew Deskur, member of the ARISS-US Education Committee, was selected by the Association of Science & Technology Centers (ASTC) to present a poster session talk at its (virtual) annual conference.  ASTC hosted 35 poster presentations. Deskur is the director of the Kopernik Observatory & Science Center, which had an ARISS contact in September 2020.  His talk title was “Ham Radio Operators Help Inspire the Next Generation of DIYers.” Several viewers reached out to him after his talk; one does outreach for the NASA Artemis program and one works at the Ontario Science Center.
  

 

• October 11: ARISS-Europe volunteer Ciaran Morgan gave a Zoom presentation on ARISS at the 2020 AMSAT-UK Colloquium. Topics covered ARISS in the UK and worldwide during the Covid era, operations of the new ARISS radio system, and developments on AREx, ARISS’s Gateway project. His talk garnered 505 Zoom viewers and 150 livestream YouTube viewers. A recording was posted later in the day and by evening, had 1,618 viewers.
  

• October 23: 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

• November 12: ARISS educator Kathy Lamont is scheduled to give a talk at the online Virginia Association of Science Teachers Conference.  Her presentation is titled “How to Talk with an Astronaut 250 Miles Above You.”   
  

 

• October 26-28: Several of the ARISS team will participate in the 3-day ISS National Lab Education Summit.

• 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.