ARISS Weekly Status Report - February 8, 2021

• January 28: An ARISS radio contact for students at Amur State University in Blagoveshchensk, Russia was successful. Cosmonaut Sergey Kud-Sverchkov supported the contact and first year students of the university’s space training classes asked him questions. Students’ recent activities had included downloading SSTV images downlinked by cosmonauts on the ISS in December. The ARISS contact and the downloading of SSTV images were part of the "About Gagarin from Space" program.
  

• January 28: An ARISS student was featured in the ISS National Lab (INL) Science in Space Today, an e-newsletter going to thousands. The ARISS item was one of seven in the newsletter and highlighted a blog contributed by an ARISS student to INL’s ISS 360.  INL had asked the young lady to pen the blog on how the ARISS contact she took part in had affected her current and future STEM studies.
  

• January 28-29: Radio enthusiasts around the world engaged in a Slow Scan TV (SSTV) event made possible by the Moscow Aviation Institute SSTV Experiment onboard the ISS. During this event, ham radio operators and space fans downloaded historical images of spacecraft and cosmonauts from the Russian space program. Throughout the event, 645 different individuals posted 1,887 images at the ARISS SSTV Gallery website for public viewing:  https://www.spaceflightsoftware.com/ARISS_SSTV/.
  

• February 5: A group of students at the Dal'nevostochnyy Federal'nyy Universitet (Far Eastern Federal University) in Vladivostok, Russia took part in an ARISS school contact. The university sponsors a number of space projects and this radio event was in conjunction with the “About Gagarin from Space” program. Sergey Ryzhikov supported the radio contact.  
  

 

• February 4-6: Three ARISS-US Education Committee members presented at two different sessions of the Space Exploration Educators Conference (SEEC) at Space Center Houston; the conference drew over 900 attendees. Gina Kwid and Beth Bivens, educators at Galileo STEM Academy in Eagle, ID co-led a presentation on their students’ STEM activities over many months following their 2019 ARISS contact, plus information on the ARISS proposal process. The 2018 SEEC ARISS exhibit is how the two educators had learned about ARISS and one of them proclaimed that their ARISS contact was “the best, or one of the two best things” she has ever done in her teaching career. The second ARISS-related SEEC session was co-led by Melissa Pore and a Space Center Houston Scientist in Residence. They demonstrated how to build a miniature neutral buoyancy lab for a classroom, offered hands-on lessons on science and engineering concepts that relate to space and under water, how Pore got involved due to her ARISS school contact, plus how teachers can get involved in ARISS. She made guest appearances at three other SEEC sessions to talk about teacher engagement in ARISS and its 20 years in space. All SEEC video presentations will be viewable to attendees for a year.
  

 

• February 2: ARISS volunteer Gordon West gave a presentation on ARISS to the student amateur radio teams and their sponsor at Sato Academy of Math & Science and McBride High School, both in Long Beach, CA. Their sponsor brings radio activities to the students who are interested in careers in medicine and engineering. West has worked with the students previously, and this time, showed them the types of STEM opportunities ARISS can provide.

 

• February 5: An ARISS contact with Mike Hopkins took place for students from 17 Ottawa Carleton District schools in Ontario, Canada, with the Ottawa Carleton Virtual Online School as lead school. More details will be available next week.

          Social Media
          Facebook - January 2021

 *January’s Biggest Reach--a post about an upcoming SSTV session on crews and spacecraft--garnering a whopping 15,457 Reaches and 1,293 Engagements.

Twitter: As of January 31, 2021, ARISS Twitter followers totaled 14,207, a slight gain over December.
 
Instagram: As of January 31, 2021, Instagram followers increased to 267, somewhat larger than December.
 
YouTube Members: As of January 31, 2020, there are 820 YouTube members.
 
ARISS Web Unique Pageviews:  For January 1 – 31, the total of Unique Pageviews was 47,055.
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        Upcoming Events 

• February 9: Sterling Middle School in Ashburn, VA will host an ARISS radio contact with Shannon Walker.

 

• February 10: Students at Red Hill Lutheran in Tustin, CA are looking forward to their ARISS contact with Mike Hopkins, and will be in school following Covid guidelines.