• Aug - Sep:  ARISS volunteer Stefan Dombrowski taught “Satellite Camp” for a number of weeks in Redu, Belgium.  Each camp is one-week long for 13-year-olds, and 25% of the youth are female. The leaders are trying various marketing techniques to increase that percentage. The camp offers three levels that students can progress through. Curriculum is based on building a satellite and each kid goes home with one -- called MySat!  Kids figure out what a satellite is, what it can do, why it doesn’t fall down, a lot of theory, before they discover electronics: resistors, volts, etc. They work on breadboards and then learn to solder PC boards.  They discuss radio communications, ham radio, and ARISS, and listen to passing satellites including ARISS contacts. Stefan wrote, “Just listening only to the downlink causes students to become curious.” Next is programming and discovering the computer, Arduino.  They add a 2.4 GHz transmitter, put everything in a 3D-printed box and the result is a CubeSat-like device. A drone lifts (“launches”) the satellites up ~300 feet and a ground station captures the flight data: temperature, air pressure, humidity that will be analyzed.  Students enjoy a field trip to the ESA ground station in Redu. They get outside for a ham radio transmitter hunt and similar hands-on ham activities.  At other sponsored camps (rocket, robot, astronaut camps), Stefan is asked to demonstrate ham radio contacts and satellite reception (NOAA, FunCube, ISS). 
  

  

• Sep 11: The Coastal Leader, a newspaper in Kingston, S. Australia, ran a post-event story related to the ARISS radio contact a few days earlier at the Kingston Community School. The article covered the radio contact and the school’s science week, with the theme Destination Moon, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing.  Students studied why the anniversary was so widely celebrated and they researched living in space and current and future space programs.  After the ARISS contact, students listened to the recording of it and evaluated things about the event.
  

• Sep 10:  ARISS volunteer Darrell Warren led a professional development event for 18 educators who are part of the Young Scientists Program (YSP) at University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles, CA.  YSP is run by USC’s Dornsife College Joint Education Project with a program director and undergrad STEM teaching assistants who have a passion for education, community service and science.

 
 
         Upcoming Events   

• Sep 18: Templestowe College in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia will host an ARISS contact for students with Nick Hague.
  
• Sep 20: Excitement is building at the Boys and Girls Club in Ft. Meade, MD as kids there prepare for their ARISS chat with Nick Hague.
  
• Sep 23: Youth at the Children’s Inn at NIH in Bethesda, MD, will speak with Nick Hague during their re-scheduled ARISS contact.
  
• Sep 24:  Members of the University of Colorado Amateur Radio Club with the help of hams in the Boulder Amateur Radio Club in Boulder, CO will sponsor an ARISS contact with Nick Hague for youth at Northridge Elementary School.
  
• Sep 24: For an ARISS contact at a school in Plovdiv, Bulgaria--the cosmonaut will be scheduled soon.
  
• Sep 27: ARISS-Russia team has set up an ARISS contact for United Arab Emirates (UAE) school #1 with the Space Flight Participant.
  
• Sep 28: The UAE school #2 will have its ARISS contact sponsored by ARISS-Russia with the Space Flight Participant.
  
• Oct 2:  UAE school #3 has its ARISS contact scheduled with the Space Flight Participant.

• Sep 3: Galileo STEM Academy in Eagle, ID reported on their successful ARISS radio contact with Nick Hague who answered 20 student questions while a crowd of 850 watched the action.  VIPs present for the contact included the mayor of Eagle, the West Ada School District supervisor, and staff from the Eagle Office of Emergency Management. This public school enrolls K through 8th graders and was the first school in the state to become STEM certified in 2018 through AdvancEd.  The academy promotes student critical thinking and problem-solving skills by providing hands-on project-based learning utilizing the engineering design process. Teachers put into practice a number of NASA lessons and ARRL lessons before and after attending ARRL Teachers Institute, a week-long educator professional development technical workshop. The school sponsors a ham radio club and a rocket club, and two teachers studied and got their ham radio license.  Students can participate in First Lego League Robotics, maker space, Botball and Jr. Botball Robotics using C++ coding, FabSLAM 3-D Printing Team, Raspberry Pi Operating Systems group, Math Counts Team, and the Idaho Tech Challenge.
  

• Sep 3: After much hard work and preparation, Kingston Community School in Kingston SE, South Australia, Australia held their ARISS contact with Drew Morgan. The events took place before an audience of 140 as Morgan answered 13 students’ questions. One TV station and two newspaper reporters were on hand to cover activity. Audio of the contact was carried over a live simulcast at the internet links, Echolink, IRLP 9556, and AllStar 48820. Kingston Community School’s mission is “to foster a STEM approach, critical thinking, problem solving, creativity and curiosity, communication, teamwork, innovation, entrepreneurship and adaptability.”

 
 
           Upcoming Events   

• Sep 18: Students at the Templestowe College in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia will take part in an ARISS radio contact with Nick Hague.
  
• Sep 20: The Boys & Girls Club in Ft. Meade, MD will host an ARISS contact with Nick Hague.
  
• Sep 23-26:  A date will be chosen from this range of days to re-schedule an ARISS contact at The Children’s Inn at NIH (National Institutes of Health) in Bethesda, MD.   Last-minute crew sleep-shift schedule change resulted in a switch in plans for the contact that had been scheduled originally for August 22.
• Sep 24: ARISS-Russia will support an ARISS contact for a school in Bulgaria.

• Aug. 22: A last-minute crew sleep-shift schedule change resulted in a switch in plans for an ARISS radio contact at The Children’s Inn at NIH (National Institutes of Health) in Bethesda, MD.  Instead of the radio contact, Astronaut Clay Anderson was invited to visit the children via Skype Video to answer their prepared questions, and he uplifted them.  The NIH team along with Frank Bauer, and Melissa Pore (from the ARISS-US Education Committee) led hands-on STEM activities related to ham radio and NIH work, set up tables that allowed kids to handle and hear about ham radio hardware, and gave presentations on ham radio, ARISS, and NIH Tissue Chip studies. The youth received NASA activity booklets and backpacks. The NIH ARISS radio contact will be re-scheduled.  
  

• Aug. 19: The September/October issue of Arlington Magazine featured an article on Melissa Pore, an avid ARISS volunteer and an engineering, cybersecurity and technology teacher at Bishop O’Connell High School in Arlington, VA.  The story told of her love for teaching and the hands-on real-world philosophy she uses to successfully engage students.  She had managed her high school’s 2018 ARISS contact and students now enjoy ham radio demos and numerous STEM and ham-related activities involving among other things, soldering and integrated circuit boards.  She stated, “They leave my class with an engineering design project they are proud of.”  Some of her main projects are student-designed and assembled satellites. Melissa serves on the ARISS-US Education Committee and has represented ARISS at many STEM-related conferences, staffing the ARISS booth and giving presentations to educators about ARISS.
  

• Jul 23: The ARISS-Russia team reported that a successful ARISS radio contact took place for 50 high school students through the Gagarin from Space program at the Ufa Air & Space Summer Camp in Bashkortostan, Russia.  Two consecutive orbits were allotted, one not long before midnight and then during the following orbit.  They watched the ISS travel overhead and spoke with cosmonauts during the first orbit, and continued the radio conversation during the next orbit. 
  

• Aug 20: The September issue of the monthly journal, QST, mailed to 160,000 ARRL members (American Radio Relay League) carried a 2/3-page photo story on the ARISS-International meeting in Montreal in June.  The article covered meeting topics and highlighted the transfer of the ARISS JVC Kenwood D710GA from ARISS-Japan to ARISS-Russia.
  

• Aug 13 & 24: The ARISS Operations Team ran two successful tests, preparing for the upcoming three ARISS contacts to be handled by ARISS-Russia and initiated by the Russian Space Flight Participant from the United Arab Emirates.

                                                      Social Media
 
                                                     ARISS Facebook:

                                                       
                                                           ARSS Twitter:   

• ARISS Twitter followers at the end of August 2019 totaled 11,278, a gain of 220 or 2.0% over the end of July 2019.
  

 
         Upcoming Events   

• Sep 3: An ARISS contact hosted by Kingston Community School in Kingston SE, South Australia, AU will be supported by Drew Morgan.
  

• Jul 4-6:  Woodridge Middle School in High Ridge, MO, will host an ARISS contact in December 2019.  Their ARISS Education Proposal promised outreach they would do to bring attention to the value of STEM and ARISS, and to solicit support for more STEM initiatives they want to incorporate into the curriculum.  So 11 teachers and parents set up four large tables and various roll-ups under a big tent at Fair St. Louis.  They, along with 3 students, engaged 4,000 adult and youth visitors!  Youth made model rockets that were released with compressed air, built basic radio kits, talked on the air during ham radio demos, and saw exhibits on astronomy and projects, such as Tomatosphere, the school adopted once the staff won the ARISS contact. Adults also viewed displays on how ARISS helped the school so far.  The school principal said, “This is exactly what students need to see—how science is relevant in their lives.”  
  

• Aug 15: Loreto College, a girls’ school in Adelaide, S. Australia, Australia hosted an ARISS radio contact with Nick Hague. An audience of 250 listened as he gave comprehensive answers to 12 student-prepared questions. In the hours prior to the contact, the audience listened to a girl speak about her research done through the SETI program, watched a video of some of the girls during their time at US Space Camp, and looked at numerous student science projects displayed by the girls including a spacesuit one girl had made. Guests at the ARISS contact were representatives from the defense industry, the Adelaide University Southern Hemisphere Space Studies Program, and the Premier’s office--premiers head the Australian states’ executive governments. Video was live-streamed of the hams operating the Italian telebridge radio station to facilitate the ARISS contact. Live audio was transmitted to hams around the world over the Echolink and Internet Radio Linking Project (IRLP) systems. The school Facebook page carried stories.
  

• Aug 17: A short ARISS radio contact supported by Luca Parmitano was a highlight of the 90th anniversary event and hamfest in Zug, Switzerland, sponsored by the Union of Swiss Shortwave Amateurs, the Swiss national association for ham radio operators.  During the contact, Parmitano gave greetings that were received by 200 adults and youth.  The audience included a representative from the Swiss Parliament and the government of the state of Zug, and the mayor of Zug. The event was covered by TV System Tele 1, radio SRF Regional, and a newspaper. Ham radio groups relayed the audio around the country.
  

          Upcoming Events    

• Aug 22: Youth at The Children’s Inn at NIH (National Institutes of Health) in Bethesda, MD are looking forward to their ARISS contact with Drew Morgan. 

• Aug. 8:  Students at Kyoto Tachibana Junior & Senior High School in Kyoto, Japan had a successful ARISS radio contact with Nick Hague. An audience of 100 took in the action, as 19 students asked their questions. A newspaper covered the event.  
  

• Aug 2-3: Three ARISS team members set up and staffed an exhibit at the 2019 Satellite Educators Conference at Cal State University in Los Angeles, CA.  The sponsor, Satellite Educators Association is a non-profit, professional organization of educators and those wanting to enhance the educational environment to excite students about STEM through satellites and satellite data. The team set up a large table displaying photos about ARISS, amateur radio, and the International Space Station. The exhibit featured two satellite antennas, rolling video clips, and a satellite-tracking program for the ISS in real time. Teachers and teacher candidates coming from as far away as New Jersey stopped by, exclaiming amazement when hearing about ARISS.   A team member offered visits to give demos about ARISS and ham radio to their schools and several have emailed him to set these up.  Exhibitors including AIAA, NOAA, NASA, and JPL worked as a team to spark conference goers’ interest.  
  

 

• Aug:  The ARISS team has been working on plans for the 2nd annual ARISS Education Summit to be held October 20-21 at College Park, MD. 

 

• Aug 8:  ARISS learned that due to its outreach activities in recent years, eight interns at Goddard Space Flight Center have earned their ham radio licenses. As they engage in their STEM outreach, having a ham radio license will equip them to more easily share details about ARISS and ham radio STEM hands-on activities.

 

• Aug 9: Last week’s online Amateur Radio Newsline Report featured a segment on the recent Slow Scan TV event that commemorated astronaut Owen Garriott for his outstanding achievements.  The 12 images of Garriott were enthusiastically received and downlinked by radio enthusiasts and the general public around the world.

 

 
         Upcoming Events    

• Aug 15:  Students at Loreto College, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia will have an ARISS radio contact with Nick Hague. The school plans to live stream the contact.

 

• Aug 22: The Children’s Inn at NIH in Bethesda, MD will host an ARISS contact with youth. Drew Morgan will support the activity.

 

• Jul 29 - Aug 1:  ARISS team members staffed an exhibit at the ISS Research & Development Conference in Atlanta, GA, and in particular, engaged with students and educators on STEM Day.  The exhibit was set up in conjunction with, and funded in part by, the ISS National Lab and Space Station Explorers (SSE).  The conference enabled ARISS to coordinate more closely with SSE partners including ISS Above and Magnitude.IO.  Team members got to chat with Serena Aunon-Chancellor to thank her for the ARISS radio contacts she supported, inspiring tens of thousands of youth and educators.  She was told how hams loved her recorded greetings that the ARISS team featured in presentations at many conventions and conferences. She learned also that hams greatly enjoyed the general radio contacts she had initiated.  She replied that she would love to do it all over again if she gets another chance to fly.  

• Aug 3:  Frank Bauer attended the ISS National Lab Space Station Explorers education summit. He gave a presentation on ARISS’s status and this generated a lot of discussion and ideas on how the SSE partners can work together on future opportunities.  

 

• Aug. 2: Dhruv Rebba, age 15 of Normal, IL won the 2019 Bill Pasternak WA6ITF Memorial Young Ham of the Year national award.  His dad inspired him to earn a ham radio Technician Class License at age 9 followed by upgrading to General Class at 10.  Dhruv began taking part in many volunteer activities at his local ham club, including on-the-air events and ARISS. He met with his Chiddix Junior High School teachers and convinced them to submit an ARISS proposal, and even suggested things they might write. The proposal was chosen for a 2017 ARISS contact with Joe Acaba.  Dhruv is now an avid promoter of radio and ARISS at many US conventions.  He helped plan the 2019 World Scout Jamboree ARISS contact. He joined ARISS’s Lunar Gateway team, is an ARISS Mentor trainee, and is interested in a career in aerospace.

 

• Aug. 1 - 4:  ARISS team members from around the globe worked together to support another ARISS Slow Scan TV (SSTV) event with downlinked images from the ISS.  This session featured 12 images transmitted to Earth that commemorate the accomplishments of astronaut Owen Garriott.  ARISS SSTV events are very popular among worldwide ham operators, shortwave listeners, and the general public. This session was no exception with today’s count being a whopping 10,036 images that people captured and uploaded to the ARISS SSTV Gallery at: https://www.spaceflightsoftware.com/ARISS_SSTV/.  As always, people posting their images can qualify for an ARISS commemorative award certificate.

 

• July 29 - 30: ARISS-Russia launched an SSTV event using the Moscow Aviation Institute MAI-75 experiment onboard the ISS.  Ham operators and other radio enthusiasts primarily in Russia, Europe, Asia, South America, Africa, and Australia were able to downlink 961 images. Many of these can be viewed at the ARISS gallery website at: https://www.spaceflightsoftware.com/ARISS_SSTV/ .
  

•  July 20:  ARISS volunteer Darrell Wilson gave a ham radio and ARISS presentation titled “Making Friends Around the World,” at the Mountain Friends Camp, a Quaker peace camp near Mora, NM for youth.  He stressed ARISS international teamwork and the diversity of the ISS crews and their collaboration. He explained that hams regularly make lifelong friends from other countries while talking often over the air to them.  After the campers got on the air using his ham radio, he displayed a letter written in Japanese characters that he received from a Japanese ham after having talked to him often over the air for years.  The Japanese friend wrote, “I hope the children at your meeting may someday get a ham license and be able to share their peace and friendship with other people in the world with different cultures and languages.” The youth wrote thank you cards to the US hams and the Japanese ham.

 
         Upcoming Events  

• Aug 8: Students at Kyoto Tachibana Junior & Senior High School in Kyoto, Japan will hold their ARISS contact with Nick Hague.

 

• Aug 15: Luca Parmitano will support an ARISS contact for Loreto College students in Adelaide, Australia. 

                                        ARISS Social Media for July 2019

ARISS Twitter followers at the end of July 2019 totaled 11,058, a gain of 142 over the end of June.

• July 22-Aug 2:  The 24th World Scout Jamboree hosted at Summit Bechtel Scout Reserve, WV is for over 45,000 girls and boys of all races from 152 countries. On the 27th, many hundreds of scouts witnessed an ARISS radio contact with Drew Morgan who handled 12 questions. Scouts were from the US, Australia, Bolivia, Iceland, Japan, Pakistan, UK, and Sweden. Streaming on the Jambo radio Facebook page resulted in 6,500 live viewers and 112 shares, a reach of 8,300 and 1,500 clicks as of July 28. A scout group in Gilwell Park, UK met at their England activity centre to listen “long distance” on their own ham radio station to the ARISS contact. Jambo offers manifold education events and the Jambo ham staff hosted multiple hands-on STEM activities, as promised in their ARISS Education Proposal. Scouts learned about ham radio payloads (transmitters, receivers for data collection) and winds while participating in near daily balloon launches—one report showed landfall in Spain. Scouts aimed ham antennas and transmitters while trying radio direction finding in the woods. Each day 350-400 scouts took turns, visiting as small groups, trying out seven different ham radio stations, talking to hams around the globe and using ham radio satellites. An article on the ARISS contact is at https://www.amsat-on.be/2019/07/27/jamboree-speaks-with-drew-morgan-via-on4iss/.  Over a dozen ham news outlets ran pre-ARISS contact stories. YouTubes were made of balloon launches for the Jambo ham Facebook page (reach was 810). The second balloon launch’s countdown is at:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2olTXDOCCWA.
  

• July 26: Kennedy Space Center Education Center was the site of the 2nd Space Port Area Conference for Education (S.P.A.C.E.). Science teachers and informal educators listened to Bob Cabana and other astronauts give presentations and took advantage of workshops on engaging students in space lessons and activities—one of these was presented by Melissa Pore, a teacher on the ARISS-US Education Committee.  On day 3, an ARISS display, worked in conjunction with, and funded in part by, the ISS National Lab and the CASIS Space Station Explorers (SSE) program, was one of many space education exhibitors. Melissa and two ARISS representatives, Charles Sufana and Dave Jordan explained ARISS to educators stopping by. Melissa received an award from the ISS National Lab and CASIS SSE for her “service, commitment, and desire to push the boundaries of STEM Education.” This related to her educational activities involving satellites and her 2018 ARISS contact for her STEM classes and the Engineering Club she sponsors at Bishop O’Connell High School in Arlington, VA.    
  

       Upcoming Events  

• July 29 – Aug 1:  At the ISS Research & Development Conference in Atlanta, GA, ARISS team members will support outreach in conjunction with, and funded in part by, the ISS National Lab and the CASIS SSE program.   

 

• July 29 - 30: An ARISS Russia SSTV event from the ISS is planned using the Moscow Aviation Institute MAI-75 experiment. Image downlinks will be targeted primarily for areas of Russia.  

 

• Aug 1 - 4: An ARISS SSTV event from the ISS is planned for reception by radio operators and others worldwide.

 

• Aug 8: Kyoto Tachibana Junior & Senior High School students in Kyoto, Japan, will have an ARISS radio contact with Nick Hague.

 

• July 29 – Aug 1:  ARISS team members have been planning ARISS participation and outreach activity for the upcoming ISS Research & Development Conference in Atlanta, GA.  The team’s outreach is being worked in conjunction with, and funded in part by, the ISS National Lab and the CASIS Space Station Explorers (SSE) program. ARISS is an SSE partner.    
  

 

• July 7-12: ARISS was highlighted in the American Radio Relay League’s (ARRL) booth at the IEEE International Symposium in Atlanta, GA.  Attending were 1,400 delegates.  ARRL’s booth sported a ham radio station being operated, and the action received a lot of attention. Many people were not aware of amateur radio activities on the ISS or ham satellites, and expressed a big interest in the ARISS program and the various ham radio satellites.

 

• July 16: A successful ARISS contact was part of the About Gagarin From Space celebration at the 8th International Aerospace School, U.N. Sultanova summer camp in the Republic of Bashkortostan at Kalinovka, Russia.  Alexey Ovchinin was scheduled for the ARISS contact.  ARISS-Russia’s Sergey Samburov lectured students on space and Vyacheslav Dovgan spoke on his robot piloting experiences with Russia's Lunokhod 1 that landed and roved on the Moon in 1970.   

 

• July 8-12: ARISS was featured a number of times during the ARRL’s Teachers Institute (TI), a professional development course for educators, held in Newington, CT.  Besides a myriad of technical topics such as satellite operations, MAREA (Mars Lander/Marine Amateur Radio Robotics Exploration Activity that uses ARISS’s APRS network), and analog-to-digital converters, the TI instructor covered various hands-on activities students can do that are tied to ARISS. He said after his own school’s ARISS contact that students told him things like, “I get it now…I never liked math, but the ARISS activities made me see why math is important to space science. I want to get into ham radio and STEM.”

 

• The TI course was the theme of the online weekly show, “Ham Talk Live,” also.  ARISS was highlighted multiple times during the show’s hour-long program, which consisted of interviews with the TI instructor and the teachers.  

 

• July 19:  The final day of weeklong power quality and acoustic tests on the new InterOperable Radio System resulted in success. The tests were performed with the ARISS hardware team members working in concert with NASA Johnson Space Center’s test and certification team. The team is looking forward to the final set of comprehensive tests that can totally certify the system for flight.
  

• July 19:  ARISS was featured in a detailed ARRL web story about the upcoming ARISS contact for the 24th World Scout Jamboree in West Virginia.  The article described ham radio hands-on activities to be offered; a ham radio scouting team was already there setting up big antennas and ham stations for youth to try starting the first day of Jamboree. 

 
            Upcoming Events  

• July 26:  ARISS will be part of an outreach exhibit at the Space Port Area Conference for Educators (SPACE) at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.  ARISS volunteers are working in conjunction with, and funded in part by, the ISS National Lab and Space Station Explorers program (ARISS is an SSE partner). Equally important, one of the ARISS volunteers who is on the ARISS-US Education Committee will present her conference talk on her students’ experiences related to ARISS.  
  

 

• July 27:  Girl and boy scouts from around the globe will speak with Drew Morgan during an ARISS radio contact at the 24th World Scout Jamboree at Summit Bechtel Scout Reserve in West Virginia.

 

• Early August:  Plans are moving forward for two ARISS-Russia SSTV downlink events.  One of the sessions will honor Owen Garriott, the first astronaut to bring ham radio to space.

• July 15-19:  The Interoperable Radio System (IORS), ARISS’s next generation radio system, is undergoing a battery of stress tests to certify it for operation on the International Space Station. Hardware team members Lou McFadin and Kerry Banke are at the NASA Johnson Space Center supporting the tests in concert with the NASA test and certification team.  The week of July 8 the JVC Kenwood D-710GA radio and the AMSAT-developed Multi-Voltage Power Supply successfully completed a series of Electro-magnetic Interference (EMI)/Electro-Magnetic Compatibility (EMC) tests to ensure the ARISS hardware will not interfere with the ISS systems or other payloads.  This week, the IORS is going through power quality tests to verify the hardware will not introduce harmful signals back into the ISS power system.  Acoustic tests will be performed also, to ensure that noise produced by the radio and power supply fans is sufficiently low and will not impact overall noise level on the ISS.  Successful completion of these tests is a key milestone in preparing the IORS for launch. ARISS expects the IORS to be ready for launch before the end of the year.   
  

• July: ARISS member Dave Jordan has been coordinating aspects of ARISS’s outreach at the Space Port Area Conference for Educators (S.P.A.C.E.).  Two ARISS-US Education Team members will support the event.  One will give a presentation she had submitted that was accepted by S.P.A.C.E.  Both will staff an ARISS exhibit in conjunction with, and funded in part by, the ISS National Lab and Space Station Explorers program (ARISS is part of this program).

 

• July 11: The ARISS contact with Alexey Ovchinin and the Youth at the Aerospace School of U.N. Sultanova summer camp was successful; other details have not been received.

 

• July: The ARISS-US team worked with ARISS-Russia to prepare for an SSTV downlink session for August.  This session will honor Owen Garriott, the first astronaut to use amateur radio in space.

 
         Upcoming Events 
 

• July 16: Youth at the Aerospace School of U.N. Sultanova summer camp are scheduled for ARISS contacts with Alexey Ovchinin.
  

• July 27: Girl scouts and boy scouts from around the globe will be speaking with Drew Morgan during the 24th World Scout Jamboree at Summit Bechtel Scout Reserve in West Virginia.

• June 28:  Traverse City, Michigan was the site for an ARISS contact with Nick Hague and youth at the Traverse Area District Library. He answered 16 questions. Over 100 people were in the library’s largest room, and more people in several overflow areas saw the library’s live-stream on monitors.  Media coverage included two TV stations and a cable TV system, which aired the event real time. The city had set up a visit from the NASA Journey to Tomorrow Exhibit, and the exhibit staff attended the ARISS contact.  Greg Johnson, former CASIS President and CEO and former NASA astronaut corps member, who now manages the Traverse City Space Accelerator, Boomerang Catapult, enthralled the youth with stories and video about his shuttle missions and a fun Q&A.  The TV reporter wrote: “Eleven-year-old Adeline, eyes bright behind a pair of round wire-framed glasses, said, ‘I liked Greg Johnson talking about his astronaut days. That was pretty cool.’” The library communications manager said: The ARISS program is “…meant to create that bridge for young people—to think, ‘Maybe that’s what I want to do someday.’” The library sponsored weeks of activities including pre-taped Storytime from Space, Write like an Astronaut, Robot Arm Challenge, Astronaut Portrait, Astronomers without Borders. Astronaut Training Week certificates were awarded to those completing all activities.
  

         The library’s YouTube video is at:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OnrVCbWW9E

• Jun 19: King Island District High School students in Currie, TAS, Australia had the time of their lives as they spoke with David St-Jacques. He answered 13 of their questions and 100 people came to listen despite bad weather.  In the lead up to the radio contact ARISS received positive PR from a Tasmanian TV station, ABC Radio, and the King Island Courier newspaper. The Australian and New Zealand Echolink Network broadcasted the audio of the event and live-streamed video was provided through an ARISS telebridge station.

        The ABC Radio ARISS story is at: https://www.abc.net.au/radio/northtas/programs/drive/king-island-nasa-talk/11234472
 
          The Tasmania TV Nightly News story (clip begins at the 11:48 minute mark) is at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmlfJpfU4Js
                                                

• June 20:  Students at Rowan Preparatory School (an all-girls school) at Claygate, UK, held their ARISS radio contact with Nick Hague who answered 9 of their questions as an audience of 300 enjoyed the action. A radio station covered the event, and it was live streamed by the ARISS team.

 

• July 3: Santa Barbara Public Library in Santa Barbara, CA hosted an ARISS contact for students with Nick Hague; they asked 15 questions before a packed gallery of 120. Streaming was on the library’s Facebook page and on the city’s web page. On hand were news reporters and the City Cable TV System, which live-streamed the contact.  The library reported great support from the Santa Barbara Amateur Radio Club and the Hughes Amateur Radio Club.  In prior months, the library sponsored a robotics camp and a space camp with hands-on engineering and technology projects, invited a NASA JPL engineer to talk about Mars, and hosted activities on ham radio including satellite contacts, circuit boards, and the ham radio tie to astronomy.  More related programs are scheduled through July.   

 
         KCSB FM Radio’s interview is at:
https://soundcloud.com/kcsbfm/santa-barbara-students-speak-with-iss-astronaut
 
         Two news outlets’ stories are at:
https://www.noozhawk.com/article/santa_barbara_library_contacts_international_space_station_20190703

https://www.edhat.com/news/santa-barbara-public-library-to-contact-international-space-station

• June 26-28: The 2019 Annual ARISS-International Delegates Meeting was hosted by the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and the ARISS-Canada team.  Eleven nations were represented by 37 people attending and 9 tying in remotely.  The ARISS hardware team had met a day earlier. CSA Program Manager of the Lunar Gateway Program Ken Podwalski gave a talk on CSA Gateway planning. The ARISS team discussed its ideas for participating in NASA’s Deep Space Gateway program, such as ham radio communication, equipment development, education and public outreach. During the meeting the JVC Kenwood company presented two Kenwood D710GA transceivers to ARISS-Russia; one radio will replace the aging ISS ham station and one is for training cosmonauts. Dave Honess, ESA HE Space Operations ESTEC ISS & International Education Operations Coordinator talked about ideas for enhanced ARISS education. A future SSTV session was discussed to honor the late Owen Garriott, the first astronaut to use ham radio in space. VIPs at the meeting included the president of the AMSAT (Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation), the president of the Canadian national ham radio organization (Radio Amateurs of Canada); a board member of the US national ham radio organization (American Radio Relay League); and the president of the Italian national ham satellite organization (AMSAT-Italia).

 
                                                               Social Media
 
                                               ARISS Facebook statistics for June:

ARISS Twitter followers at the end of June 2019 totaled 10,916, a gain of 149 or 1.4% over the end of May.
 
Upcoming Events  
 

• July 11 & 16: Youth at the Aerospace School of U.N. Sultanova summer camp are scheduled for ARISS contacts with Alexey Ovchinin.
  

 

• Early August:  Plans are moving forward for another ARISS-Russia SSTV downlink event.