Viewing the ISS SSTV pictures is always fun for me, that's part of what we all like to do.

But today I had our 11 year old nephew Juan, who is visiting from Colombia, in the shack. He got an earful on the ISS from me about the SatPC32 tracking map, which we also compared on the globe, and who and what was up there on ISS. ISS passed over Colombia on the 1610 UTC pass too, so he saw how it's possible to see or hear them even from his home. He got a wonderful eyeful with the image we saw come down live, and I explained what the various things in the image were about.

But hearing the cosmonaut calling, when I told him it was a real astronaut talking on the ham radio, was a real gol. Eyes wide open!

ISS accomplished their mission of bringing "outer space" to kids today, and Juan jumped right on the tell-me-more wagon after the pass with great interest in the ISS, our amateur radio satellites (I showed him other ISS and ARISSat SSTV pictures I had received), and even HF ham radio as we tuned the bands and watched ISS track down across South America and into the Atlantic.

It doesn't get any better than that. Thanks, RS0ISS! Thanks, ARISS!