40 years ago this week, the historic joint Apollo-Soyuz mission was conducted. Apollo-Soyuz (or Soyuz-Apollo in Russia) represented the first joint USA-Soviet mission and set the stage for follow-on Russia-USA space collaboration on the Space Shuttle, Mir Space Station and the International Space Station. The Soyuz and Apollo vehicles were docked from July 17-19, 1975, during which time joint experiments and activities were accomplished with the 3 USA astronauts and 2 Soviet Cosmonauts on-board. Apollo-Soyuz was the final mission of the Apollo program and the last USA human spaceflight mission until the first space shuttle mission in 1981.
To commemorate the 40th anniversary of this historic international event, the ARISS team has developed a series of 12 Slow Scan Television (SSTV) images that will be sent down for reception by schools, educational organizations and ham radio operators, worldwide. The SSTV images are planned to start sometime Saturday morning, July 18 and run through Sunday July 19. These dates are tentative and are subject to change. The SSTV images can be received on 145.80 MHz and displayed using several different SSTV computer programs that are available on the internet.
We encourage you to submit your best received SSTV images to:
http://spaceflightsoftware.com/ARISS_SSTV/submit.php
The ARISS SSTV image gallery will post the best SSTV images received from this event at:
http://spaceflightsoftware.com/ARISS_SSTV/index.php
Also, as a special treat, on Saturday July 18 the ISS Cosmonauts will take time out to conduct an ARISS contact with students attending the Moon Day/Frontiers of Flight Museum event in Dallas Texas. This Russian Cosmonaut-USA Student contact is planned to start around 16:55 UTC through the W6SRJ ground station located in Santa Rosa, California. ARISS will use the 145.80 MHz voice frequency downlink (same as the SSTV downlink) for the Moon Day contact.
For more information on ARISS, please go to our web site: www.ariss.org
The ARISS international team would like to thank our ARISS-Russia colleague, Sergey Samburov, RV3DR, for his leadership on this historic commemoration.
Frank H. Bauer, KA3HDO
ARISS International Chair