- May 15: Young members of the Airdrie Space Science Club in Airdrie, AB, Canada engaged in a successful ARISS Multipoint Telebridge Contact via Amateur Radio with Chris Cassidy. The youth tied into the radio contact from homes via phone conference. Chris at the ARISS ham station mic answered all 14 student questions. A newly-vetted ARISS telebridge radio station was operated by an ARISS volunteer in South Africa. The new ARISS YouTube channel streamed the contact, garnering 200 live views. After the contact, another 943 watched; it is at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mflSlShPHA. The youth had focused on learning about space and radio communications and launching rockets and balloons that utilize ham radio for tracking. A club co-founder and teacher wrote: “During this pandemic, our opportunities to develop the kids’ interests in space have been interrupted. Looking forward to this ARISS contact has gotten them staring up toward the sky and imaging themselves as an astronaut one day.” A student’s father said, “We have a very ecstatic young man here.” ARISS distributed a news release prior to this second test. Four ARISS sponsors augmented the effort. Thanks goes to SCaN for its Social Media posts about the contact. ISS National Lab emailed the release to its 33 Space Station Explorers programs. AMSAT posted details in its weekly online news. ARRL provided stats on its activity: their web news item saw 258 unique pageviews, a story ran in their weekly e-letter (109,000 subscribers), and a Facebook post about the livestream reached 2,500 people with 73 people clicking on the YouTube, many sharing with their local ham clubs.
- May 8: An ARISS-Europe team member worked with a regional branch of Poland’s national ham radio society, the Polish Amateur Radio Union, to develop a 40-minute Zoom program on ARISS for Polish students. The event was livestreamed and covered how ARISS contacts work during the pandemic and how students engage in ARISS activities from home. The YouTube video was played of the recent ARISS contact for the Northern Virginia Students Group in Woodbridge, VA. A guest speaker, teacher Micol Ivancic who is an ARISS team member, tied in to describe ARISS hands-on activities. She introduced the ESA education mascot, Paxi, who had starred in an online ESA lesson about ARISS. Zoom attendees totaled 20 students, teachers, and principals from 4 schools. Some of the teachers have begun working on plans for winning an ARISS contact.
ARISS Upcoming Events
- May 20: Rosalie White will present a Zoom program on ARISS to the Experimental Aircraft Association’s Chapter 1314 in Keene, NH.
- June 2: A mid-altitude balloon will launch from Los Angeles, CA and another from San Francisco in a race to determine the one reaching the Eastern Time Zone first. Students at home around the world can track the balloons using ARISS’s online lessons developed by ARISS teachers.
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