ARISS News Release No. 24-49

Dave Jordan, AA4KN

ARISS PR

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

ARISS Contact is Scheduled with Students at

Gymnasium der Stadt Meschede, Meschede, Germany

August 21, 2024—Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) has received schedule confirmation for an ARISS radio contact between an astronaut aboard the International Space Station (ISS) and students at the Gymnasium der Stadt Meschede located in Meschede, GER. ARISS conducts 60-100 of these special amateur radio contacts each year between students around the globe and crew members with ham radio licenses aboard the ISS.

Gymnasium der Stadt Meschede is a medium-sized, municipal high school with about 700 students between ages 10-18 and about 55 teachers. The city of Meschede is in a rural area, about 50 km east of Dortmund in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, in western Germany. Students are offered STEM learning at various grade levels. In level 5 (ages 10-11), students are introduced to scientific work with small experiments. In grades 9/10 (ages 14-15) students deal with topics related to "bits and bytes", cryptography, astronomy and programming. In the upper school, students can choose subjects such as physics, biology or chemistry as advanced courses. Students are offered opportunities to participate in working groups/workshops in the STEM field. Students in recent years have also launched several stratospheric balloons with measuring instruments and cameras and have evaluated the data. Supporting the school and students during this ARISS contact are a number of local amateur radio clubs.

This will be a direct contact via Amateur Radio allowing students to ask their questions of astronaut Sunita Williams, amateur radio call sign KD5PLB. The downlink frequency for this contact is 145.800 MHz and may be heard by listeners that are within the ISS-footprint that also encompasses the relay ground station.

The amateur radio ground station for this contact is in Meschede, Germany. Amateur radio operators using call sign DRØZ, will operate the ground station to establish and maintain the ISS connection.

The ARISS radio contact is scheduled for August 23, 2024 at 10:05 am CEST (Meschede) (8:05 UTC, 4:05 am EDT, 3:05 am CDT, 2:05 am MDT, 1:05 am PDT).

The public is invited to watch the live stream at: https://www.instagram.com/gds_meschede/

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As time allows, students will ask these questions:

1. Why did you choose to become an astronaut?

2. What education or profession did you have before your astronaut training?

3. What was the most interesting experience of your space flight which you would like to share with us?

4. What was the hardest part and what was the most exciting part of your training for the ISS?

5. What kind of experiments do you do right now?

6. What happens if an important part of the ISS breaks? How can you fix it?

7. How is the work on the ISS divided among the astronauts? Who does what?

8. What does the daily routine look like, when the sun rises and sets every 90 minutes?

9. Are there differences between the training of women and men?

10. What does zero-gravity feel like at the beginning and what is it like now? Do you get used to it?

11. How long do you think most astronauts would want to stay on the ISS for a single mission period?

12. Have you ever heard a weird noise from outside and if so, could you describe to us what it was like?

13. How can you contact your family members?

14. Do you believe in extraterrestrial life?

15. Do you work shifts or do you all work at the same time?

16. Did you ever have a collision with an object?

17. What do you do if you are bored?

18. What role does the ISS play in the preparation of future Mars missions?

19. Do the astronauts play computer games in their free time? If so, which ones?

20. How long were you trained before becoming an astronaut on the ISS?

About ARISS:

Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) is a cooperative venture of international amateur radio societies and the space agencies that support the ISS. In the United States, sponsors are the American Radio Relay League (ARRL), Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC), Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation (AMSAT), NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation program (SCaN) and the ISS National Lab—Space Station Explorers. The primary goal of ARISS is to promote exploration of science, technology, engineering, the arts, and mathematics topics. ARISS does this by organizing scheduled contacts via amateur radio between crew members aboard the ISS and students. Before and during these radio contacts, students, educators, parents, and communities take part in hands-on learning activities tied to space, space technologies, and amateur radio. For more information, see http://www.ariss.org.

Media Contact:

Dave Jordan, AA4KN

ARISS PR

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