ARISS News Release No.24-47

Dave Jordan, AA4KN

ARISS PR

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

ARISS Contact is Scheduled with Students at

Tuskegee Airmen Inc. National Convention, Arlington, Virginia

August 15, 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 Tuskegee Airmen Inc. National Convention located in Arlington, VA. 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.

Tuskegee Airmen Inc. (TAI) has 50 chapters across the United States with the common goal of assuring the legacy of the Tuskegee Airmen of WWII is used to inspire and motivate young people in the career fields of aviation and aerospace. The annual TAI National Convention (in the Washington DC area this year) affords high school students the opportunity to interact with aviation and aerospace professionals and engage in STEM related hands-on activities, including use of the ARISS’ SPARKI SDR (Software Defined Radio) kit, learning about the technology that makes student conversations with the astronauts on the ISS possible. This ARISS contact is to be a part of the TAI National Convention Youth Day with those high school student attendees participating in the contact.

An ARISS contact during the height of the convention, including attendees from all over the U.S., would be an experience that will spread far beyond the confines of our conference, as all take home first-hand exposure and expanded understanding of the vast possibilities of science in their lives. Post convention, the information on the ISS contact, SPARKI and ARISS programs will be shared with all chapters, and thus hundreds of communities across the country.

This will be a telebridge Contact via Amateur Radio allowing students to ask their questions of astronaut Jeanette Epps, amateur radio call sign KF5QNU. 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 telebridge station.

The ARISS amateur radio ground station (telebridge station) for this contact is in Greenbelt, Maryland, U.S. The amateur radio volunteer team at the ground station will use the callsign K6DUE, to establish and maintain the ISS connection.

The ARISS radio contact is scheduled for August 17, 2024 at 1:34:57 pm EDT (Arlington, VA) (17:34:57 UTC, 12:34 pm CDT, 11:34 am MDT, 10:34 am PDT).

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As time allows, students will ask these questions:

1. What was it like launching up into space?

2. What’s the biggest difference between a day on Earth compared to in space?

3. How do you navigate being able to float when there’s no gravity and do you ever get motion sickness?

4. What kind of experiments are you working on and why do them in space?

5. What do you do for fun during your downtime in space?

6. How and when do you sleep?

7. Is being in space going the way you thought it would go or have you had surprises?

8. If you got to go into space again, what would you change to improve your experience?

9. If you could bring one thing from Earth into space that you don’t have now, what would it be?

10. How long was the training phase to be able to go into space?

11. If you had to, how would you describe space in one word?

12. What’s the first thing you’ll do when you get back to Earth?

13. How has this experience impacted your life? Did it change your views of the world?

14. Why did you want to travel to space, and did you think it would be scary?

15. What’s the hardest thing about being on the space station and why?

16. What’s the easiest thing about being on the space station and why?

17. What do you miss on Earth most?

18. What is the coolest thing about being in space?

19. Do you to talk with your family every day?

20. Do you ever feel claustrophobic?

21. How do you tell time in space since there’s no sunrise or sunset?

22. Do you ever have any real privacy?

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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