March 21: Toyonaka High School in Osaka, Japan hosted an ARISS contact for students to talk with Kayla Barron; she answered 20 student questions. People social-distanced on site totaled 75, including students, educators, parents, and a visiting professor. The school was named one of Japan’s Super Science High Schools and 30 students belong to the Toyonaka High School Science Club. Several times a year, the high school club members hold scientific labs for elementary school students—this year, the activities related to ARISS. The Kansai ARISS project team assisted the students.  These scientific labs for the younger students will continue through the school year.  SpaceRef.com posted in its March 21st ISS Status Report a paragraph that ARISS had prepared about the Toyonaka radio contact.
 
March 17: ARISS learned that ARISS educator Rachel Jones who mentored students at the Savannah River Academy (SRA) in Grovetown, GA, has won a national-level award.  The Radio Club of America (RCA) and the International Wireless Communications Expo selected Rachel as winner of the 2022 Young Professionals Award. It goes to individuals who “work in wireless, are under age 35, and execute some of the industry's most innovative ideas, showing creativity and influence.”  Rachel developed and executed a year of exciting hands-on lessons tied to wireless for grade 1-8 SRA students as preparation for their December ARISS contact. She got help from her ham club, Amateur Radio Club of Columbia County, to guide all 145 students in transmitter hunting, launching balloons with radio payloads, and operating various types of ham radio equipment. Rachel received her award at the 2022 International Wireless Communications Expo during the Radio Club of America Breakfast.
 
March 18:  ARISS Chair Frank Bauer and ARISS Director of Engineering Randy Berger prepared charts for a professional development workshop given by Frank at the 2022 5th Annual HamSCI Workshop. The talk covered recent ARISS research, such as the MarconISSta experiment, along with new ARISS educational programs that focus on research. Most of the 122 audience members were undergraduates and professors. A VIP, Esayas Shume, NASA Science Mission Directorate, Heliophysics Division attended and afterwards, wanted to talk to Frank about similar interests. Several professors and undergrads sought out Frank to discuss how to be involved in ARISS research.  He said, “This conference was a great event for allowing ARISS to network with people interested in research.”  
 
March 22: An ARISS contact took place for youth in the city of Aznakayevo in the Republic of Tatarstan, Russia. The youth group participates in the About Gagarin From Space program. Anton Shkaplerov supported the ARISS contact.
 
March 21: A selection of ARISS team members studied a batch of student resumes and gave recommendations to Frank Bauer on NASA interns to consider inviting to work with ARISS. Two ARISS education programs will utilize students to assist with putting into motion the various aspects of the ARISS programs.
 
March 16: Rosalie White gave a half-hour presentation on the latest ARISS news at the ARRL-ARISS Board Committee meeting. She presented what’s new in regard to hardware plans, operations, recent accomplishments, and education programs.  ARRL (American Radio Relay League), a major sponsor of ARISS, re-named Rosalie as the ARISS Delegate representing ARRL to the ARISS teams for 2022. This was the board committee’s first meeting of the year.
 
ARISS Upcoming Events 
 
April 5  Leonardo Da Vinci Campus-Nauen, Nauen, Germany ARISS contact, ARISS-Europe team
April 7  Space Hardware Club with area schools, Huntsville AL ARISS contact, ARISS-US team
TBD Axiom Canada & Israel school contacts, ARISS-Canada & ARISS-Europe team                                     

March 17: Members of the Kids Star Club in Sayama, Japan had a chance to talk with Mark Vande Hei during an ARISS contact; he answered 17 students’ questions. Prior to the contact, elementary school students in the Sayama area had been recruited for their interest in learning about space and earning an amateur radio license. They took part in virtual lessons on space exploration, electricity, radio waves, and operating the club’s amateur radio ground station. The youth who passed their ham radio license exams got to generate the questions that all the students asked during the radio contact. The club livestreamed the action and streamed it also over YouTube with a reported 170 viewers watching. A TV and FM radio station covered the event.
 
March 11: ARISS technical team volunteer Kerry Banke was chosen to receive the prestigious 2022 Hamvention Special Achievement Award for his outstanding dedication and talents devoted to the Multi-Voltage Power Supply, part of the ARISS InterOperable Radio System (IORS). For several years, he spent hours nearly every day on ARISS’ custom-built power supply (needed because ISS modules don't operate on the same voltages) that was launched in March 2020 on SpaceX-20. Astronauts utilize the IORS for all Columbus module ARISS radio operations. Banke volunteered for a number of ARISS activities over the years and also as a SAREX Technical Mentor (Shuttle Amateur Radio EXperiment, ARISS’ predecessor) for schools. Award ceremonies will be at the 2022 Hamvention (usually over 30,000 attendees come from around the globe to this convention) held May 20-22 in Xenia, Ohio. Hamvention produced a news video about Banke and his award (730 viewers). The American Radio Relay League posted a story about the award for its web pages and its e-letter, The ARRL Letter, which goes to 107,000 subscribers.
 
March 16: ARISS educator Micol Ivancic reported that a young lady in the region of Rome, Italy, is earning her engineering degree this week and that two ARISS Italian volunteers assisted her. The young lady did her thesis on analyzing ARISS packet radio transmissions using different types of radio antennas, including a yagi antenna, which she built. Her thesis acknowledged Micol and Fabrizio Fava for their guidance, but Micol says she was the one who was honored to assist.
 
February 20: The ARISS SSTV (Slow Scan TV) Team made up of 10 volunteers performed an experiment in an effort to expand ARISS capabilities by testing a variety of different SSTV modes to download images downlinked from the ISS. The team utilized ARISS-Europe approved ground stations, and then downloaded 32 images. This first in a series of SSTV experiments to be carried out using the ARISS InterOperable Radio System in the Columbus module, this test used voice repeater mode. Images were downlinked while the ISS was over Europe, Australia, and Indonesia. All interested ham operators and other radio enthusiasts in the ISS footprint during the transmissions were encouraged to try receiving and decoding the special downlinked signals and email reports to ARISS. Over 570 participants, some in Hawaii and North American, sent reports! Each person received an acknowledgement message with a thank you.
 
March 18: ARISS Mentor Gordon Scannell learned that Snow Elementary School teachers in Dearborn, MI, wanted recommendations for cool books to read to students during Reading Month. Gordon, one of the school district’s IT staff members, shared the URL for Story Time from Space, including Emily Calandrelli’s “Ada Lace, Take Me to Your Leader” with its ties to ARISS, read by Anne McClain. When he saw one of the teachers a few days later she reported that her 20 students enjoyed Story Time from Space. She added that some of the girls in her class were very excited to learn that girls can be astronauts, too!  She said: “Apparently I have some girls interested in becoming astronauts when they get older!”
 
March 21: The Toyonaka High School ARISS contact was successful and more details will be available for next week’s report.
 
ARISS Upcoming Events 
 
March 22  Aznakayevo city youth, Republic of Tatarstan, Russia ARISS contact, ARISS Russia team
TBD for April  Axiom Canada & Israel school contacts, ARISS-Canada & ARISS-Europe teams
 

March 1: University of Maryland’s Global Campus (UMGC) website featured a story posted on the Cybersecurity blog about Rachel Jones, an ARISS informal educator who led STEM lessons at an ARISS school. She always wanted a space career, had NASA internships, and earned a Master’s in Space Studies at International Space University in Strasbourg, France where she discovered she loved cybersecurity. Back in the US, she earned a Master’s in Intelligence and this spring, will finish a UMGC Bachelor’s in Cybersecurity. Leading young students in ARISS hands-on lessons made her recognize the importance of exposing kids to science at an early age. Rachel said, “I really didn’t have the mentorship to recognize what I wanted to do early in life, so I want to make sure I provide that to others.” The engaging story is at:     
https://globalmedia.umgc.edu/2022/02/28/degree-in-cybersecurity-opens-a-door-to-space-exploration-for-rachel-jones/
 
March 3: ARISS-US Director of Education Kathy Lamont coordinated with two ARISS team members and held an ARISS Proposal Webinar. This was for educational institutions wanting to learn how to be selected for an ARISS contact, including tasks such as preparing STEAM classroom lessons. Attendees learned about the ARISS Education and Contact Proposal they would prepare and how to navigate the submission process. Attendees numbered 25.
 
March 1: An ARISS February weekly report featured five-year-old Mario Vasquez and his father in Spain who shared the excitement of receiving ARISS SSTV images during the ARISS December session. Mario loved it, and ARISS educator Micol Ivancic found out about his reactions. She decided to mail him a special gift of decals and patches tied to ARISS and space. He was elated, sent her his photo, and anxiously awaits the next ARISS SSTV event.
 
March 6: Two years ago, SpaceX-20 launched to the ISS with the ARISS InterOperable Radio System (IORS) in its protective pouch. Today the IORS continues to work flawlessly and is a staple of ARISS operations in Columbus. ARISS’ power supply guru Kerry Banke reported the IORS has been on the ISS for over 17,500 hours and has traveled about 306 million miles!  Frank Bauer congratulated the ARISS team who contributed to the development and flight certification of the IORS.
 
March 5: ARISS Director of Engineering Randy Berger set up a booth area representing ARISS at the Irving Hamfest, the second largest regional amateur radio get-together in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. He displayed ARISS hardware and information on ARISS education programs and school radio contacts. He talked with over 60 hams who had questions. He reported, “Most said they were going to listen to other hams engaging with the onboard ARISS radio system. Three want to help with ARISS school contacts and two want to help schools with preparing an ARISS Education and Contact Proposal to submit.” 
 
 
ARISS Upcoming Events 
 
March 17 Kids Star Club Sayama, Sayama, Japan ARISS contact, ARISS -Japan Team
March 18 HamSCI Workshop, Huntsville AL, presentation on ARISS experiments, ARISS-US Team
March 21 Toyonaka High School, Toyonaka, Japan ARISS contact, ARISS-Japan Team
TBD for April: Axiom crew school contacts in Canada and Israel                       

February 28: Carter G. Woodson Middle School hosted an ARISS radio contact with Thomas Marshburn; he answered 20 student questions. An audience of 16 educators, 58 students, and 15 guests listened. The school is named for Carter Woodson, a son of former slaves; he became the second African-American to earn a doctorate from Harvard. Founder of the association for the Study of Negro Life and History, he is considered the father of Black History Month. The ARISS contact live stream (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmFtTluF3aQ) was on YouTube, and also posted is a school video of student STEM activities; the two garnered 390 views. An online newsfeed, the Progress-Index featured an article about the contact. NBC-12 reporters came to school the next day to interview students for a special show. The school’s STEM curriculum included courses in space exploration and related technology, the Solar System, and careers tied to the study and exploration of space. The faculty partnered with members of the Richmond Amateur Radio Club who provided instruction on how radios work, hands-on kit-building and electronics, and amateur radio communications.
 
February 4-25: With their ARISS contact scheduled for April, the Space Hardware Club of the University of Alabama (UAH) in Huntsville recently visited several area schools whose students will be part of the contact. As prep for this, the undergrads visited the schools, leading lessons in space-related projects. They spent a day with 100 students at New Hope Elementary School in New Hope, building and flying paper rockets and then manipulating string to learn how radio waves work. Undergrads returned to the school to teach kids with a critical thinking game involving balloon payloads. At Mountain Gap Middle School in Huntsville, 120 students gathered with UAH club members to make and race paper airplanes and then joined together for a session with the critical thinking game on balloon payloads.
 
February 8: The Liborius Gymnasium in Dessau-Roßlau, Germany hosted a 2018 ARISS contact and students are continuing to study STEM tied to space and wireless radio. Twelfth graders love their physics class and built a ham radio station to engage with the QO-100 geostationary satellite. Recently, 35 twelfth graders planned an exposé for 45 tenth graders and staff. The capstone was a one-hour Q&A ham radio contact via QO-100 with four Antarctica Neumayer Station scientists. One was Theresa Thoma, a ham operator with computer science and electrical engineering degrees. Katherine, a Liborius student who has her ham license, used the school ham radio set-up to initiate the call while students listened anxiously, hoping the contact would work. Theresa answered from Neumayer’s radio room—students “broke out in frenetic applause.” She and the three other scientists answered questions about life at Neumayer, their research and technology, the ham station, and Antarctic effects on radio propagation. Afterwards, Liborius students said Theresa was a good role model for them. Next, Liborius students used a globe, satellite model, and string to present radio wave theory to non-hams. They used props to explain frequency and amplitude of an electromagnetic oscillation, and described the math and physics in “an engaging way.” Media reps came from radio stations MDR, SAW, Corax, Mitteldeutsche Zeitung newspaper, and MDR TV; the latter showed a three-minute video on the evening news titled, “Sparks—a hobby that broadens horizons.”
 
March 3: The ARISS team wrote and distributed a news release on working with Axiom Space. Two crew members scheduled to fly on Axiom Mission-1 (Ax-1) will use the ARISS radio to conduct school radio contacts. Ax-1 crew members Mark Pathy from Canada and Eytan Stibbe from Israel will support the contacts.  ARISS trained them on using the ARISS radio system and guided them on studying to earn their ham radio licenses. Stibbe will talk with middle and high school students in Israel. 40 school classes are expected to take part in his “Rakia” mission with theoretical and practical sessions on radio-based communication. Pathy’s personal mission theme of “Caring for people and the planet” will benefit Canadian elementary and high schools with STEM content and mentorship. Students developed questions on how human bodies react to being in space, doing things in zero gravity, and the state of our planet.
 
February: ARISS teacher Melissa Pore has been sharing with Bishop O’Connell High School students in Arlington, VA the many new STEM education activities she learned at the Space Exploration Educators Conference in Houston, TX. Her engineering students and amateur radio club members are enjoying space and communications activities tied to their 2022 Global Studies Program, “Space Exploration, Engineering & International Cooperation,” with ARISS as the role model.
 
ARISS Social Media for February 2022
 
ARISS Facebook – February

Twitter: On February 28, 2022, ARISS Twitter followers totaled 16,227, a gain of 1.2% over January.
Facebook: Followers for February 2022 increased to 7,305.
Instagram: Followers at the end of February 2022 grew to 404.
ARISS YouTube: At the end of February, subscribers increased to 1.64k.
 
 
February: Top Tweet—12.9k Impressions       Top Facebook Post—3,566 Reaches
                                     119 Engagements     
Twitter: On February 28, 2022, ARISS Twitter followers totaled 16,227, a gain of 1.2% over January.
Facebook: Followers for February 2022 increased to 7,305.
Instagram: Followers at the end of February 2022 grew to 404.
ARISS YouTube: At the end of February, subscribers increased to 1.64k.
 
February: Top Tweet—12.9k Impressions       Top Facebook Post—3,566 Reaches
                                          119 Engagements       
 
ARISS Upcoming Events 

March 18 HamSCI Workshop, Huntsville AL, presentation on ARISS experiments, ARISS-US Team