ARISS Weekly Status Report - October 5, 2020

• 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.