• June 16: Students at I.E.S. Pedro de Valdivia (IESPV) in Villanueva de la Serena, Spain were thrilled when their school was scheduled to host an ARISS MultiPoint Telebridge Contact via Amateur Radio. They talked with Chris Cassidy who answered 11 questions. Over 1,000 interested parents, school students, faculty and the general public watched the live stream. Another 1,400 watched it afterwards; it is at https://youtu.be/PyNqsTMqAoQ. The school offers STEM topics for K-12 students and put together the IESPV Space Project with the main objective being for students to interact with the ISS.  They are involved with Earthkam and learned to track the ISS in order to watch passes overhead. The school set up a ham radio station and students tried out ARISS SSTV and packet radio contacts, and listened to other ARISS schools’ contacts.
  

• June 16: Stay-At-Home policies have not prevented the Oregon Connections Academy in Mill City, OR from preparing students for their ARISS radio contact scheduled for December 2020. The staff has engaged homebound students in eight online assemblies live-streamed from Space Center Houston. Student excitement about the ARISS contact caught the attention of the Portland newspaper, The Oregonian, which ran a story covering the school’s curriculum and activities leading to their ARISS contact. When the state of Oregon allows, teachers will schedule field trips related to astronomy, amateur radio and other STEM integrations.  
  

 

• June 14: In the Mid-Altitude Balloon Race supported by ARISS, the winning balloon had been launched from Pasadena, CA. It was caught in a small tree just outside of Liverpool, NS, Canada. Its journey was assumed to have ended there when the signal from its APRS payload was heard continuously by ham radio operators from the Annapolis (NS) Valley Amateur Radio Club and the Annapolis Royal Space Agency (ARSA). They set up a rescue mission, trekking on foot through a swampy wooded area, tracking the beacon’s transmissions until they spotted the balloon. ARSA’s Derek Smith noted the electronics still functioned just fine, so some of the team members who are college students are considering relaunching the balloon next year. The hope is it might continue on to Europe. Smith said, “Your project has inspired us to incorporate these types of projects into our [high-altitude balloon] program. This was the first time we retrieved something that we did not launch ourselves! The Annapolis Valley Amateur Radio Club has been a great group to work with because we get pulled into the ham radio community, and it adds a new dimension to our balloon tracking via APRS.” The rescue team was interviewed by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, who ran an excellent story; it is at:  https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/california-mid-altitude-balloon-lands-nova-scotia-woods-1.5611192.  
  

• June: The July 2020 issue of the monthly journal, QST, published by the American Radio Relay League (ARRL) contained three items about ARISS. First was a piece on ARISS’s Multipoint Telebridge Contact via Amateur Radio, explaining how it’s used to ensure social distancing, and citing the successful contacts for the Northern Virginia Student Group in Woodbridge and the Airdrie (AB) Space Science Club in Canada. A second item was a short article about ham operators and the Young Scientists Program (sponsored by University of Southern California) having mentored Los Angeles students at the Vermont School prior to their ARISS contact.  The third item was an ad that describes what ARISS is and does. QST is read by 160,000 ARRL members. 
  

 
         ARISS Upcoming Events     

• June: TBD
  

• June 1:  At 8:30 AM PST, four balloons launched on the Mid-Altitude Balloon Race. In California, ARISS educator Joanne Michael and two other Space Station Explorer educators (from Magnitude.io and ISS Above) had balloons fiercely competing, with another educator’s balloon launched from Pasco, WA. Initially, the balloons headed northward and amateur radio APRS telemetry reported dropping temperatures with altitude gain. One balloon went missing—maybe in an evening storm. Others turned easterly at 27,000 feet. One’s telemetry interruptions added to the suspense. After 29.5 hours aloft, balloon KN6EQU-2 from Pasadena won the race by reporting crossing into the Eastern Time Zone near Thunder Bay, ON.  
  

 
         Public responses:

• scout master: “My scout group followed the four balloons this week and the scouts were fascinated!” 
  
• a parent: “My 6-year-old girl and 3-year-old boy each picked a balloon and tracked them on a paper map. Morning and night, they updated the position and we spent a few minutes talking about the state or province, learning the map. It was great fun for all!” 
  

 

• The race was popular on social media, with an outstanding response to Facebook posts of 14,359 Reaches.  353 individuals watched the YouTube livestream of the race’s initial 4.5 minutes (https://youtu.be/UD-rO3nKMZo), and views more than doubled, now at 783.  ARISS web pages showed a phenomenal surge of interest in the race—the typical 700 daily views climbed to more than 30,000 (see chart below)!  People checked how to track the competitors and the related lessons at https://www.ariss.org/mid-altitude-balloon-race.html    
  

 
                   Below: 1) ARISS web page stats, 2) map of competing balloons  
 
                            Huge Increase in ARISS Web Page Views, Visits

• June 4: The ARISS US executives have worked for many weeks to transform from a working group to a legal entity, and are pleased to report that ARISS-USA is a new non-profit corporation. The ARISS team composed and distributed a news release about the achievement. In it, ARISS heartily thanked its sponsors for the steadfast support given to the ARISS program and its ideals to bring the wonders of space into the hearts and minds of students worldwide. ARISS aims to continue to earn high regards from those sponsors.
  

 

• May 26: ARISS teacher Melissa Pore finished the school year for Arlington, VA’s Bishop O’Connell High School by e-teaching all of her classroom students more real-life lessons on communications.  They reviewed their 2018 ARISS contact and observed that there was almost no noticeable delay in speech during their ARISS contact while other communication types have a 2-3 second delay. The Engineering Club will continue lessons through summer. They had a social-distanced Star Party and then summer meetings will begin with a series of STEM speakers—the first, on the NASA Dragonfly Mission to Titan.
  

• June 2: The weekly W5KUB Amateur Radio Roundtable online podcast featured ARISS teacher Joanne Michael as a special guest to talk about the excitement generated by the Mid-Altitude Balloon Race supported by ARISS.  Other presenters spoke on high-altitude and long-duration balloons and ones that travel around the world.  The podcast was simulcast on WBCQ. 

ARISS Social Media
 
Facebook in May 2020

Twitter: At the end of May 2020, ARISS Twitter followers totaled 12,635, a gain of 140 over April.
  
Instagram: As of May 31, 2020, total Instagram Followers have increased to 150.
 
          ARISS Upcoming Events      

• June 16: Social-distanced students at I.E.S. Pedro de Valdivia in Villanueva de la Serena, Spain will speak with Chris Cassidy during an ARISS contact.
  

• June 1: ARISS educator Joanne Michael had challenged Space Station Explorer educators to a balloon race with tracking done via amateur radio payloads. The exciting distance-learning race, the Mid-Altitude Balloon Race, saw four educators successfully launch balloons simultaneously from Torrance, Berkeley, and Pasadena, CA and Pasco, WA. Over 435 socially-distanced students, teachers, and the public worldwide watched the livestreamed launch and first 4 minutes of competition at https://youtu.be/UD-rO3nKMZo/. Some began the graphing and predicting lessons found at https://www.ariss.org/mid-altitude-balloon-race.html for the balloon to reach the Eastern Time zone first to win.  Watch for more details in next week’s report. 
  

 

• The post to follow the racing was at www.ariss.org and ARISS social media…and in a mere 16 hours, interest soared!  ARISS Facebook showed 6,424 Reaches, 666 Engagements, 40 Shares, and 42 Likes. A teacher, Courtney, was inspired after reading the post to want a launch for her school; she wrote to readers, “Let’s get planning and get your thoughts and ideas and let’s make this happen for the students.”
  

• May 21: River Ridge High School in New Port Richey, FL hosted their ARISS contact in March. Teacher Linda Nowicki led students in a multitude of STEAM activities, as her ARISS proposal had promised. Now, she engages students in e-lessons on space. They learned to calculate orbital planes and the energy required to change orbits. They researched uncrewed space systems. One project had students determine the next two sightings of the ISS at their homes and record a) where they would view it from, b) what direction it would approach, and c) a sketch of their yard and house indicating potential obstructions preventing their observations. Linda saw such a worth in ARISS activities that she will continue lessons in the next school year. She was invited recently to become a member of the ARISS-US Education Committee.
  

• May 22: Frank Bauer gave a Zoom talk to space enthusiasts, students, educators and others on the program Magnitude Live #13, sponsored by Magnitude.io, a Space Station Explorers program located in Berkeley, CA.  Frank provided an overview of amateur radio and ARISS and gave examples of how amateur radio impacted his space career. He also explained the new social-distance distance-learning ARISS contacts, and the balloon race led by ARISS teacher Joanne Michael, with Magnitude.io as a contestant.  The presentation was also live-streamed on Magnitude.io’s YouTube Channel; 17 people listened via Zoom and 127 via the YouTube.
  

 
 
          ARISS Upcoming Events      

• TBD
  

 

• 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.

May 6: ARISS teacher Joanne Michael and her students in Los Angeles, CA enjoy balloon launches.  She recently challenged educators at Magnitude.io (a Space Station Explorers program, like ARISS) in San Francisco to an intercontinental mid-altitude balloon race--and this week they set June 2 as the launch date. They have developed lessons for students around the globe to receive and track data from the APRS payload. ARISS now has an area on the ARISS website for lessons, and they are posted. Teachers and parents can excite at-home youth to engage in the race. The URL is: https://www.ariss.org/mid-altitude-balloon-race.html

March-May:  Girls and boys in the Airdrie Space Science Club enjoyed many hands-on STEM lessons in the months before lockdown in Airdrie, AB, Canada. Students are now excited about STEM again because they have a scheduled ARISS contact with Chris Cassidy. They will be at their homes and the contact will be the second test of ARISS’s new distance-learning style Multipoint Telebridge Contact via Amateur Radio using a brand new ARISS telebridge ground station. The main focus of the club is to build and launch rockets and balloons, most with ham radio payloads. One of the club’s founders wrote, “Our club is always looking at the history of rocketry and space travel. ARISS gives kids a chance to learn about space history as it happens over their heads.” The other club’s founder said, “I have an amateur radio station in my classroom. I look forward to the day when the club members can come back and enjoy working on their radio skills and develop their own interests in communications.”  
February 24: ARISS learned recently that a presentation was given by ARISS volunteer Will Marchant to students and faculty at the Chelsea Academy in Front Royal, VA. His visit was shortly before the school shutdown; the school enrolls students in 4th to 12th grade.  Will explained ARISS and then helped them listen to the ARISS contact for Kittredge Magnet School in Atlanta, GA. The Virginia students were very interested and teachers learned about ARISS-related STEM activities. One teacher asked where to find information on submitting a proposal for an ARISS contact in the future. 
May 1:  Rosalie White gave a talk on ARISS at a Zoom-based Bloomington (IN) Amateur Radio Club meeting. She described how and why the new Multipoint Telebridge Contact via Amateur Radio was developed. Club members heard about the successful first test of the new style ARISS contact with students in their homes in Virginia on April 30. The club continues to be very supportive of ARISS.

• April 30: The Northern Virginia Students group in Woodbridge, VA of kindergarten through fifth graders took part in an ARISS radio experiment with Chris Cassidy on the ISS.  The radio contact was the first ARISS test of a new method allowing the continuation of school contacts in the COVID era. For this Multipoint Telebridge Contact via Amateur Radio, students used computers in their homes to join the radio contact with the ARISS ISS ham station and an ARISS volunteer at his telebridge radio ground station. This test saw initial difficulties but with fast work by Chris and the ARISS team, he answered 5 students’ questions. The morning events were livestreamed for the public—365 views (2,003 more, afterwards) on the new ARISS YouTube Channel set up by the team. The URL is: https://youtu.be/Cu8I9ose4Vo. There wasn’t time for two brothers to ask their questions but during troubleshooting, Chris voiced their questions from his list and replied. Afterward, the boys were asked if they would like to write a letter to NASA about the experiment; they were thrilled, even more so while being videotaped reading their letter aloud. The short but very fun video is at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YdnHN3ROh0&feature=youtu.beA.
  

 

• At last count, ARISS news release’s information was carried by over 91 web and Social Media sites worldwide, including ScaN, and also was celebrated during an ISS National Lab webinar. The new ARISS YouTube Channel already has 101 subscribers. Two of many curriculum activities for students leading up to the radio contact included learning an astronaut’s typical duty schedule, using APRS downlinked telemetry to track a balloon launch, and downloading ARISS SSTV images.
  

• April 26: Upper grade-level students in the KMO Kolska Wyspa schools in Kolo, Poland have a future ARISS contact. The past few weeks they have studied e-lessons oriented to space science. They had a virtual class on orbital velocity of the Moon around the Earth and about the relation to altitude and orbital period. They learned one of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky's long-ago lessons on stages of rockets. For students who wanted more, they investigated rocket acceleration during the start of the first stage. Similar lessons will continue.
  

• April: Prior to pivoting to e-teaching, ARISS teacher Melissa Pore had engaged her Arlington, VA Bishop O’Connell High School classes in hands-on learning with the AMSAT CubeSat Simulator software defined radio, working with satellite telemetry. This week their Zoom class taught them to use a telemetry decoder software program for future science experiments. These will include calculating orbit needs in respect to a mission, such as a solar panel budget analysis.
  

ARISS Social Media
 
Facebook in April 2020

Twitter: At the end of April 2020, ARISS Twitter followers totaled 12,495, a gain of 142 over March.
  
Instagram: As of April 30, 2020, total Instagram Followers have increased to 142.
 
 
      ARISS Upcoming Events      

• May 15: Youth who have been part of the Airdrie Space Science Club in Airdrie, Alberta, Canada will speak with Chris Cassidy. The contact will be the new style Multipoint Telebridge via Amateur Radio with students at home.
  

• April 6: ARISS teacher Melissa Pore took part in virtual meetings with ScaN staff members and a number of education leaders on subjects such as radio telescopes, CubeSats and ARISS.  Also discussed were the development of lessons plans related to ARISS and amateur radio space communications.
  

 

• March 7: ARISS volunteer Will Marchant gave a presentation that included ARISS at the 2020 National Association of Rocketry’s annual conference (NARCON) held in Tucson, AZ.  He talked to an audience of 20 about ARISS and amateur radio in hobby rocketry.  A number of ARISS teachers have gotten students involved in hobby rockets that utilize ham radio for transmitting telemetry and Slow Scan TV color images.
  

• April 10: ARISS volunteer Melissa Pore KM4CZN continues to correspond with educators she met while hosting an exhibit table on behalf of ARISS at a February social networking event sponsored by the ISS National Lab Space Station Explorers at Space Center Houston.  The educators are interested in ARISS and most are in the US though a few are in other countries. They network via Facebook.
  

 

• April 13: A long article about ARISS was posted by ARRL (American Radio Relay League) on its web news page. The article, based on Frank Bauer’s post on ARISS’s web pages, described how ARISS is transforming activities to be done with infinite social distancing due to COVID-19 for students and education institutions.  ARRL ran the story also in its online weekly newsletter and on Twitter.  At last check, over 50 online radio news outlets around the US and the world had picked up the story.
  

 
         ARISS Upcoming Events     

• April 21:  The ARISS team will test a plan to transform ARISS contacts and how ARISS interacts with youth and education institutions through e-learning with every student and staff member in their own homes.