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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

 
         Upcoming Events
 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 
         Upcoming Events
 

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

ARISS Social Media
Facebook in September 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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