• ARISS Twitter followers at the end of March totaled 10,385, a gain of over 1% from the end of February.

         Upcoming Events     

• Apr 1-2: ARISS Russia is planning for the Moscow Aviation Institute MAI-75 Slow Scan TV experiment during a few orbits that cover Moscow; expected times are from 1400-1900 UTC. Ham operators there and in adjacent areas should be able to download images.

 

• Apr 6: The 58th Hamilton Scout Group in Stoney Creek, ON, Canada are looking forward to their ARISS contact with David St-Jacques.  

 

• Apr 10:  Students at Shaftesbury High School in Winnipeg, MB, Canada are planning their ARISS contact with David St-Jacques.

 

• Apr 11: All at École des Charmilles in Thyez, France are preparing for their ARISS contact with David St-Jacques.

 

• Apr 11-14: ARISS-Russia plans to hold a Slow Scan TV event related to Cosmonautics Day. Ham operators and others around the world will download images for viewing and posting at the ARISS web gallery to achieve a special event certificate and for the public to see.

• Mar 25: In preparation for their ARISS school contact, students at Moriah Central School in Port Henry, NY have been enjoying a curriculum of space science culminating in building and launching model rockets. The school has designated the first week of April as “Space Week” and will be engaging in more space-related activities prior to their contact day to be sometime in the last week of April.
  

• Mar 20: Excitement filled the students’ day at the North Point School for Boys in Calgary, AB, Canada, as they engaged in their ARISS contact with David St-Jacques.  He told students, “Every teacher that has ever taught me anything contributed to my training as an astronaut.”  He answered 16 student questions as an audience of 100 listened.  The school’s online news venues carried several stories about the event. Two TV stations’ reporters were present, and one clip is at:  http://calgary.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=1640517

 

• The school instructor, dressed in a Canadian Space Agency (CSA) jumpsuit complete with CSA patch, was highly pleased about students’ interest in their STEM studies because of the ARISS contact. One activity was building a model of the first Canadian satellite, Alouette 1, which had been launched by NASA.

• Mar 19: The ARISS team continues to make good progress on building the replacement antenna that had to be fabricated because the current ARISS antenna on the ISS will be removed when the Bartolomeo platform is installed.  The testing on the replacement antenna is complete; it has been coated with the silicon oxide depositing to protect from the atomic oxygen environment in space.  ARISS is waiting for Airbus to send the feedline and the handrail clamp so that the team can integrate them with the antenna.

• Mar 18: Nine electrical boards are being populated for each of the 10 units of the new ARISS custom-built Multi-Voltage Power Supply to be completed.  The power supplies are part of the ARISS InterOperable Radio Systems that will replace the aging ham stations on the ISS.  A special group of people were hired to populate the boards so that ARISS team members can build other parts of the radio systems and prepare for the next steps, which are the tests of the flight-identical unit and then the tests of the flight units. 

•  Mar 26:  ARISS will open a window to accept ARISS education proposals from schools and education groups hoping to garner an ARISS contact.  The window is from April 1 to May 15, 2019. This proposal cycle is for ARISS contacts to be scheduled between January 1 and June 30, 2020.  Webinars to answer educators’ questions will be held on April 11 and 16.

• Mar 18:  During an interview for the online podcast, QSO Today, news reporter Joe Lynch spoke about his favorite ham radio activities.  He also discussed ham programs that he feels are the most beneficial to others, and described several aspects of ARISS education activities.

 
 
         Upcoming Events     

• Mar 26: An ARISS contact is scheduled with students at Khabarovsk University in Khabarovsk, Russia, and Oleg Konenenko will be interviewed.
  

• Mar 28: Students at Ulluriaq School in Kangiqsualujjuaq, QC, Canada will speak with David St-Jacques during their upcoming ARISS contact.
  

• Apr 1-2: ARISS Russia is planning to run their Moscow Aviation Institute MAI-75 Slow Scan TV experiment during a few orbits that cover Moscow. Ham operators there and in adjacent areas should be able to downlink images.
  

• Apr 6: The 58th Hamilton Scout Group in Stoney Creek, ON, Canada are looking forward to their ARISS contact with David St-Jacques.  

• Mar 14:   The ARISS team continues to make good progress on the Interoperable Radio System (IORS) being developed to replace the aging, problematic ISS ham station on the ISS.  During a materials review of the IORS Multi-Voltage Power Supply, the plastic used to house its external cooling fan was judged as flammable in the ISS environment.  The team must use a different plastic and will be working with NASA HUNCH to accomplish this.  Students and their NASA mentors will be 3-D printing a plastic unit in two weeks as an evaluation sample.  It will then be decided if the new plastic cover is workable.
  

         Upcoming Events       

• Mar 20: Students at the North Point School for Boys in Calgary, AB, Canada, will have an ARISS contact with David St-Jacques.
  

• Mar 5:  An ARISS radio contact was hosted for students at CEIP Nuestra Señora Del Carmen in Torre De La Reina, Spain and David St-Jacques. He answered 18 questions while an audience of 100 listened.  There were three TV stations covering the event along with four radio news services and four newspapers.  A video was made, and the first seven minutes featured many images of student activities done over the months prior to the contact, such as studying various NASA science missions, using telescopes, learning about and practicing ham radio communications with the help of the Union of Radio Amateurs of Seville, and building models of rockets, the solar system, and space vehicles.  The middle section of the video consisted of several talks, including a message from Pedro Duque, and short presentations given by a group of students (these begin at 33 minutes).  The URL of the video is (the contact begins at 47 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rdo2-Yd6LPc&feature=youtu.be 
  

• Mar 6: The ARISS team distributed a news release about its online auction to be held April 8-14. Two unique items will be auctioned, a JVC Kenwood TS-890S transceiver signed by astronauts and a six-volume boxed set of the 2019 ARRL Handbook signed by astronauts.
  

 

• Feb 25: Huntington High School students and teachers in Huntington, TX presented their ARISS Mentor, Keith Pugh, with a very special shirt signed by all student members of the Huntington High School radio club. The club calls itself Gearheads, and the club’s ham call sign is KI5AJL. The shirt was readied and framed to show their appreciation of Keith’s support for their ARISS contact.  An unknown problem caused the contact to be unsuccessful; ARISS is attempting to schedule another date for them.

         Upcoming Events       

• Mar 20: Students at the North Point School for Boys in Calgary, AB, Canada, will have an ARISS contact with David St-Jacques.
  

• Feb 25:  The scheduled contact for Huntington High School students in Huntington, TX was unsuccessful though both the school and astronaut David St-Jacques were ready and calling. The team is trying to determine what happened
  

• Feb 25:  Pathfinder Regional Vocational Technical High School students in Palmer, MA were thrilled over their November ARISS contact with Serena Aunon-Chancellor.  They had a year of hands-on space projects and radio activities related to these subjects: CAD, Electrical, Electronics, Advanced Manufacturing, Auto Body, Business Technologies, HVAC/R, Computer Programming and Web. They’re continuing these studies, and the latest activity was making things for a thank you package they sent last week to Serena.  The most unusual present was a cribbage board custom built for Serena.  The next planned activity is a balloon launch with a ham radio payload.  Several students are studying for their ham radio licenses so they can work with the payload; one student already earned his license.

                                            ARISS Social Media - February 2019
 
                                                  ARISS Facebook Page Report  

• ARISS Twitter followers at the end of February totaled 10,276, a gain of 3.4% over the end of January.

 
           Upcoming Events       

• Mar 5:  CEIP Nuestra Senora Del Carmen students in Torre De La Reina, Spain will be talking with David St-Jacques.
  

• Feb 21: Last week’s report described school activities revolving around the Faith Christian Academy ARISS contact on Feb. 14 in Orlando, FL.  A week later, radio station WMFE posted photos and an interview by space reporter Brendan Byrne. The outstanding report of the events was for the station’s news segment, and is at: http://www.wmfe.org/students-talk-with-astronaut-on-space-station-with-a-little-help-from-amateur-radio-operators/97375.  
  

• Feb. 21: As the NASA On The Air Slow Scan TV image transmissions wound down, the ARISS team received a number of emails from people who participated for the first time and really enjoyed downloading images.  Here is an example:
  
• “I did not take a selfie of my first endeavor into non-conventional RF operation. But picture an adult man in his suburban front yard Saturday AM, in sweatshirt, slippers and pajama bottoms pointing a handheld-radio in the air and recording a sound stream into his smartphone -- having little idea of what he was doing or what would happen (and hoping the neighbors were not watching).  Through trial and error, I obtained an SSTV image by playing the recorded audio into the CQ SSTV app on my IPad. It wasn't the greatest print, but one of the coolest things I've done in amateur radio!  The icing on the cake was that night at a dinner party with friends (all non-hams), the question was posed to me if my radio hobby has progressed into the modern tech age.  What a great story I was able to share!”

 
          Upcoming Events       

• Feb 25:  Huntington High School students in Huntington, TX will have an ARISS contact with David St-Jacques. [Trying to re-schedule and determine what happened.]
• Mar 5:  CEIP Nuestra Senora Del Carmen students in Torre De La Reina, Spain will be talking with David St-Jacques.

• Feb 11:  Huntington High School students in Huntington, TX recently won a robotics competition at The Patricia Huffman Smith NASA “Remembering Columbia” Museum. Their ARISS contact is next week and area ham operators coached teacher Peggy Albritton’s robotics team and mentored students in lessons on electronics, design engineering, and more.  Students loved downloading SSTV images and made ARISS packet radio contacts.  Peggy described media interest as follows: “This week, CBS-TV 19, KICKS radio, and Lufkin Daily News reporters are coming to school to interview students. KLTV/KTRE will live-stream the actual radio contact.”  A story already posted is at: http://www.ktre.com/2019/02/09/huntington-students-make-radio-call-nasa-astronauts-aboard-space-station/?fbclid=IwAR0-UCIh0WnRFR-qnJOkyTWpxhJiESDgs126WWsorp-l0oxZfn2kudpRue0
  

• Feb 14: Faith Christian Academy in Orlando, FL hosted an ARISS contact with David St-Jacques, who answered 19 student questions while a crowd of 700 students and another 125 visitors listened. Sharon Hagle, who along with her husband is a future passenger on a future Virgin Galactic flight and founder of Spacekids Global Missions, gave a presentation to students. Attendees included the president of The League of Christian Schools, the Winter Springs City Commissioner, representatives from Lockheed Martin and the Step Up for Students group, and reporters from WMFE News and WESH TV. The school’s Facebook page live-streamed the contact (714 views) as did the Faith Assembly. Students had traveled to Kennedy Space Center, took part in space-related special activities, built ISS Above Raspberry Pi kits, downlinked SSTV images from the ISS, learned how satellite radio contacts work, and more.
  

• Feb. 5: ARISS was one of the CASIS Space Station Explorer (SSE) programs cited in Scientific American’s online opinion piece celebrating SSE groups and their visions for education.  The article is at:   http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-international-space-station-as-a-teaching-tool/

 

• Feb. 12:   ARISS celebrated a Social Media milestone – the ARISS Twitter account now has over 10,000 followers!  

 

• Feb 13:  Students at College Park School in Lloydminster, Alberta, Canada had an ARISS contact with David St-Jacques.  A crowd of 600 watched as students questioned St.-Jacques about his ISS activities; he answer 20 questions.  A TV station reporter was on hand and the events held in the gymnasium were live-streamed on the school’s Facebook page.  A good radio station web story is at: http://www.mylloydminsternow.com/29141/college-spark-school-makes-first-contact-with-the-iss/   A YouTube was posted by Prime Time News CITL / CKSA at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=synMdnK6iRE&feature=youtu.be&t=1m39s
  

• Feb 15-17:  The Russian Space Agency graciously provided time for NASA On The Air Slow Scan TV images to be transmitted a second weekend because of low-power signals the first day of the previous weekend’s event.  The 12 images highlighted the Russian and American space programs and were downlinked by students, space enthusiasts, and ham radio operators around the world. These people submitted 1,713 files the first weekend and 1,136 the second weekend, and most were posted to the ARISS SSTV Gallery at: http://www.spaceflightsoftware.com/ARISS_SSTV/. 
  

          Upcoming Events      

• Feb 25:   Huntington High School students in Huntington, TX will have an ARISS contact with David St-Jacques.
  

• Feb 7-9: The ARISS team supported a booth at the Space Exploration Educators Conference at Space Center Houston in Texas.  Booth staff included Kenneth Ransom and Erik Lopez from Johnson Space Center, and Joanne Michael, Ron Parker, Kathy Lamont, and Melissa Pore of the ARISS-US Education Committee. For presentations, Melissa spoke about her students’ STEM activities related to ARISS.  Kathy and Joanne co-presented on best practices for working with the ARISS proposal form. Kenneth said, “Our team told their schools’ exciting ARISS stories to hundreds of passers-by, causing them to realize, “I can do this, too!”  One educator said, “This sounds super interesting; I will tell my principal and get started.”
  

• Jan 29: Lake Monroe Amateur Radio Society (LMARS) members who are on the ARISS team mentoring Orlando, FL students for next week’s Faith Christian Academy (FCA) contact sponsored a Teach-In for teachers and students.  Sessions lasted 50 minutes and included hands-on activities on satellite communications, Morse code, how ARISS communications will work, and an intro to radio fundamentals. Students then talked over the ham airwaves, firing questions to a ham operator about a career as a NASA launch technician prior to retiring.  In early January, LMARS members went to an exhibit of student projects related to their ARISS contact. On February 5, an ARISS volunteer brought ham equipment for older students to downlink ARISS-Russia Slow-Scan TV images.  Teachers learned more about ARISS and satellites and even enjoyed trying Morse code themselves.

• Feb 1: The school, CEIP Nuestra Senora del Carmen in Torre de la Reina, Spain is scheduled for an ARISS contact in March.  Students have been studying all about NASA science missions and other space agency projects.  Seville news outlets posted stories about this, and the latest post is at: http://sevilla.abc.es/provincia/sevi-colegio-sevillano-contactara-estacion-espacial-201806290748_noticia.html

• Feb 8-10: An ARISS SSTV event highlighted the NASA On The Air commemoration as well as ARISS historical achievements. Images were transmitted from the ISS for people around the world to receive. Over 5,500 SSTV images were uploaded to the ARISS SSTV web page; some of the received images can be viewed at: http://www.spaceflightsoftware.com/ARISS_SSTV/index.php.

• Feb. 2: Amateur radio operators are enjoying APRS packet radio contacts again thanks to the crew swapping out the ARISS Packet Module.  The unit had been launched on a November SpaceX flight to replace the unit that had been intermittent the past year and a half.

 

• Feb 5: ARISS-Russia supported a radio contact for the Gagarin from Space program at Amur State University in Blagoveshchensk, Russia.  Handling the radio was Oleg Konenenko. 

 
         Upcoming Events      

• Feb 14: An ARISS radio contact is planned for Faith Christian Academy in Orlando, FL with David St-Jacques.

• Feb 2: Youth at the Colégio Campo de Flores in Almada, Portugal watched as 20 of their fellow students engaged with David St-Jacques during their ARISS radio contact.  The school’s robotics club recently constructed a weather station. The school’s ham radio club built a satellite tracking station and were involved with Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in building a CubeSat. The ARISS contact was also listened to by a forum audience at the Free Open Source Developers Meeting attended by several thousand in Brussels, Belgium. Ham operators had brought radio hardware and software for their booth.
  

• Feb 4: Kantonsschule Musegg in Luzern, Switzerland is a school featuring a variety of STEAM classes for 480 students.  David St-Jacques spoke to a group of them and answered 16 of their questions while a crowd of 650 people listened. Media on hand included TV station Tele 1, radio station SRF Regional, and the newspaper Luzerner Zeitung.    

• Jan 28: ARISS and North Fulton Amateur Radio League volunteers sponsored a kit-building booth at the annual Techfest in Lawrenceville, GA.  Techfest, for ham radio operators and the general public, had 306 attendees who learned about STEM and many facets of ham radio.  ARISS volunteers engaged adults and youth in talks about ham satellites, a ham radio robotics program, and ARISS, and one teacher soaked up details about how to submit an ARISS proposal.  Seventeen youth delighted in building Winky Blinkys with a little help.

 

• Jan 27:   A young lady (Erynn Dernelley) who took part in a 2017 ARISS contact and graduated from Beenleigh State High School in Brisbane, Australia was featured in the Courier Mail newspaper for being awarded the number one rank (OP1) over all Queensland students in Australia’s “Authority Subjects.” She is employed at the rocket company Gilmour Space Technologies, and because of the award, will be able to study for a BS in physics degree at the same time.  

 

• Jan 17:  ARISS volunteer Shane Lynd received two awards from the mayor, the Issac Regional Council, and the Glenden State School community at Australia Day in Glenden, Australia for his 2018 ARISS work.  Shane said “I did not fully realise the positive impact the ARISS contact had.  I heard we were nominated for an award but didn't think we would win, let alone the prestigious Mayor's Award for community service. We also received the Culture Medallion 2019. I was pleased the primary focus of the whole ceremony was on ARISS.  The awards would not have been possible without the international ARISS team.”  At the ceremony, council members spoke of ARISS delivering quality educational outcomes through training for students in rural and remote areas such as Glenden. 

 

• Jan 30:  Frank Bauer was a guest on the Ham Talk Live! weekly online podcast. He spoke about ARISS’s new radio system to be launched to the ISS, the upcoming series of SSTV images to be transmitted, and future ARISS plans. 

                                        ARISS Social Media - January 2019
 
                                             ARISS Facebook Page Report   

• ARISS Twitter followers at the end of January totaled 9,940, a gain of 1.7% over the end   of December.
  

 
         Upcoming Events       

• Feb 14: An ARISS radio contact is planned for Faith Christian Academy in Orlando, FL with David St-Jacques.

• Feb 8-10: An ARISS SSTV event highlighting the NASA On The Air commemoration as well as ARISS historical achievements has been scheduled by ARISS-Russia. Images will be transmitted from the ISS for people around the world to downlink. Details are at www ariss.org.

• Jan 23:   Students at Ashbury College Junior School in Ottawa, ON, Canada enjoyed taking part in an ARISS radio contact with David St-Jacques. With 200 attendees looking on, 18 student questions were answered by him; attendees exclaimed at his ability in explaining his answers, “especially with the complexity of the questions.”  The Australian ARISS Mentor gave a virtual tour (video) of his telebridge radio station and when he described his hot weather, it was a great teachable moment on differences in weather phenomena between the northern and southern hemispheres. The British Amateur Television Club live-streamed the contact.   
  

• Jan 17:  Last October students from Tallmadge Elementary School and Tallmadge Learning Center in Lancaster, OH, spoke with Serena Aunon-Chancellor in an ARISS contact supported by the Fairfield and Lancaster County Amateur Radio Club.  Club members continue to offer mentoring on STEAM studies for any student signing up, and 19 did so.  Students recently had fun building yagi antennas at the club’s monthly “Builder’s Night.” Also, a student and a parent are in the club’s ham radio licensing class.

           Upcoming Events       

• Feb 2: An ARISS radio contact is planned with students at Colégio Campo de Flores in Almada, Portugal, with David St-Jacques.

 

• Feb 4: Kantonsschule Musegg in Luzern, Switzerland will host an ARISS contact for students withttps://111680627-308825221614152135.preview.editmysite.com/editor/main.php#h David St-Jaques.

 

• Feb 5: Students at Amur State University in Blagoveshchensk, Russia will initiate an ARISS contact with Oleg Konenenko.