• 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.

 

• Jan 19:  Teachers at Faith Christian Academy (FCA) in Orlando, FL have been leading classroom lessons in preparation for the students’ upcoming ARISS radio contact in February.  They learned about the Mars Exploration Program and studied the structure of the International Space Station and operations there.  FCA 7th and 8th graders toured the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. The school added a new seat to the student council, ARISS Student Representative, and a young lady was chosen for it who is very interested in NASA and astronauts; she gives updates on ARISS at pep rallies and will be involved in all promotion of ARISS. 
  

 

• A special teach-in focusing on communications will be Feb. 29, led by the Lake Monroe Amateur Radio Society (LMARS). Sessions will include an introduction to amateur satellites and handling the radio hardware needed for that, the workings of the ARISS communication, talking over the airwaves on ham radio equipment to ask questions of a former NASA launch preparation employee (a LMARS member), and hands-on lessons using Morse code keys to communicate student to student. 
  

     

• Jan 14:  The Walford Anglican School in Adelaide, S. Australia featured its girls and their ARISS activity in a double-page spread printed in its 2018 annual school publication. The girls’ ARISS radio contact and related activities took place in September. The school sends a group of girls to Space Camp every year.   

• Jan 7:  An ARISS teacher in Alpharetta, GA, who’s an ARISS-US Education Committee member, was assisted by an ARISS Mentor in leading student activities at her school’s event, Mill Springs Academy Winter Learning.  During the three hours, junior high students who had participated in an ARISS contact six months ago, studied the ISS structure and a bit of its history, and orbital dynamics. Students also tried their hands with Project MAREA (Mars Lander/Marine Amateur Radio Robotics Exploration Activity) that uses a simple remote-sensing robot to simulate remotely controlling a Mars rover. The small robot is outfitted with a MAREA ham radio transceiver that receives APRS packet transmissions. The students set up an obstacle course, then measured and mapped it. They calibrated the robot using sample runs, averaging the dataset. They were presented with the syntax of the robot command language and they developed the command set for controlling the robot to accomplish their objective. Each person took a turn as Mission Control. The teacher reported that the post-assessment showed the events were a success and had good student engagement.
  

• Jan 17:  The ARISS team has learned of a German Aerospace Center (DLR) web page created in 2018 titled, “ARISS—radio signals from the classroom to space.”  The web page feature article described the intensity and excitement of ARISS contacts for student as “Valuable moments in which 20 students, thirsty for knowledge, can fire questions at the German astronaut flying 400 kilometres above Earth.”  The story related that the German Amateur Radio Club assisted schools and DLR for STEM activities and the ARISS contact. 

 

• The article contained this quote explaining Gerst’s extreme interest in ARISS:  “Students will send their endless stream of questions out into near-Earth orbit during the mission. Gerst will find answers with a healthy mix of enthusiasm and routine. This is hardly surprising, as his grandfather was an amateur radio enthusiast. Even as a child, Alexander joined his grandfather to dispatch radio messages around the world – and sometimes to the Moon. Those signals come back two to three seconds later, with the Moon acting as a reflector. Things like that are exciting and probably implanted the first seeds of passion for spaceflight in young Alexander’s heart.”    
  

         Upcoming Events       

• Jan 23: Students at Ashbury College Junior School in Ottawa, ON, are planning for an ARISS radio contact with David St-Jacques.

• Jan 8: Students at Pembroke Junior Senior High School in Corfu, NY shared an ARISS amateur radio Q&A session with David St-Jacques on board the ISS.  He answered 17 questions for an audience of 300.  Media coverage of the ARISS contact included The Daily News and The Batavian, and the latter’s story is at: https://www.thebatavian.com/schools   Last week they both ran pre-contact news items.  WHAM-TV reporters had gone to the school beforehand, as well, and did a story.  The contact was streamed live on the school Facebook page for the whole school district to watch and as of this writing had 4,001 views.  An excellent 5-minute video that was an interview of students and the teacher on the increased interest in STEM, and included a small portion of the ARISS contact, is at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTnt2MJxYLw
  

• Jan 12:  A half hour phone contact was arranged by ARISS between astronaut Mike Fossum and boys and girls attending the 25th Australian Scout Jamboree held at The Bend race track in southern Australia.   Fifteen scouts from the camp engaged Fossum in questions about his flights into space. At the camp were over 8,500 scouts and 1,500 leaders, and an additional 3,000 parents, family and junior scouts allowed to visit just for that day. Audio of the event was carried over the British Amateur TV Club online streaming system and was sent to the Internet Radio Linking Project (IRLP) and to Echolink for distribution to the ham radio community and also to a local FM radio station for broadcast.   
  

 
          Upcoming Events       
 

• Jan 23: Students at Ashbury College Junior School in Ottawa, ON, are planning for an ARISS radio contact with David St-Jacques.
  

• ARISS Twitter followers at the end of December totaled 9,765, a gain of 1.2% over the end of November.

 
        Upcoming Events       
 

• Jan 9: Students at Pembroke Junior Senior High School in Corfu, NY, are planning for an ARISS radio contact with David St. Jacques.