ARISS Weekly Status Report - July 13, 2020

• June 24: ARISS educator Neil Rapp and other leaders of the group Youth On The Air (YOTA) in the Americas planned YOTA Virtual Activity Day, a six-hour event filled with STEM activities related to ham radio. Leaders originally designed a five-day camp to be at the National Voice of America Museum near Cincinnati, OH. What with Covid-19, they switched to three days of activities youth would do at home.  The first day, YOTA Virtual Activity Day, boasted three competitions and five hands-on learning activities. College student and ARISS volunteer Ruth Willet led a session on amateur satellite operations, including how to interact with ARISS radios on the ISS.  YOTA online participants totaled 119, with 185 watching the action during the next few days.
  

• July 10: Students from Don Bosco Technisch en Beroesponderwijs in Haacht, Belgium had a Multi-point Telebridge Contact via Amateur Radio with Chris Cassidy. Details will be available to report next week.

 

• June 19: At-home students of Carmelita Manara School in Milano, Italy were thrilled to receive their Astro-Pi Mission Zero certificates. The electronic documents showed the exact start and stop times the Raspberry Pi computers on the ISS ran the students’ software programs, and where in the world the ISS was orbiting. ARISS volunteer and educator Micol Ivancic said the ESA project proved very exciting to her students. Nine teams, two to four students each, had formed online and completed the programming activity using the Mission Zero Sense HAT web emulator. Micol said next year’s challenge is to help students build an Astro-Pi clone with Sense HAT and a 3D-printed external shell. She wrote, “Students are so happy to have their certificates. We can't go to school, but we go into space!”      

 

• July 8: ARISS volunteer Ed Krome and ARISS were recognized in an article posted by The Republic, a Columbus, IN newspaper. The story told how he got intrigued in assisting with ARISS. The writer described Krome’s background as an electrical and mechanical engineer and ham radio operator for years, and after retiring, deciding to help ARISS. He was a key player in the mechanical design of the ARISS MultiVoltage Power Supply (MVPS), part of the new ham radio station waiting to be set up on the ISS for ARISS contacts. The article explained how the all-volunteer ARISS team built and tested all of the equipment and met NASA’s many stringent requirements. The writer highlighted ARISS, too, explaining that the program promotes STEM initiatives and how the MVPS will play a large part in this since it will power the interactive experiments on board the ISS that engage students.  When asked what he liked best about working on ARISS projects, Krome enthusiastically replied, “It’s just exciting and interesting. Its new technology, it’s space-related. It’s STEM, it’s trying to get the next generation, or two generations from now, interested in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.” 

 
  The newspaper story is at: http://www.therepublic.com/2020/07/08/connecting_in_orbit__retired_columbus_engineer_works_on_radio_power_supply_for_space_station/
 
          ARISS Upcoming Events     

• July 17: Students from the International Aerospace School in Ufa, Russia are planning an ARISS contact and will speak with cosmonaut Ivan Vagner.