On Feb 7, 2008, at 4:51 PM, joe cassano aka jmario wrote:

I'm curious to learn what organization owns/controls the D700 that is on the ISS and how, where, when, and by who decisions are made and implemented regarding switching the D700's mode of operation.

I understand the D700 shutdowns for safety reasons, its use as a educational tool to connect school children worldwide with NASA, its availability as a recreational device for interested ISS residents, and the fact that having astronauts watching over and tweaking the D700 is near or at the bottom of the astronaut's task list. I have never understood how the non-shutdown, non-school D700 time is allocated and who does the allocation.

Joe Cassano K3FMA

Joe,

This comes up often enough here that it's probably worthy of an FAQ document.

The hams and folks that "run" the project do pop by this list from time to time and answer this question, but generally it is like any other ISS project -- it gets scheduled very carefully and meticulously in the NASA "way" of doing things, into the Astronaut's time, and generally it can run the gamut from a very active Astronaut who enjoys ham radio working people in all of their free time, to ARISS virtually being "ignored over in the corner" -- other than the required on/off cycles you mentioned for safety purposes, and the school contact schedule which is booked out years in advance, as far as I can tell.

I think the folks that run the project have shared more details about how the internal structure of the decision-making process at NASA for the daily crew tasking all comes together from the multitude of projects and people wanting their time, but at some point it feels a bit like the old saw that "You might just not want to know how they make sausage in the sausage factory."

I think I also read that some of the key personnel that have handled ARISS recently changed jobs (a promotion, it seemed -- if I read the news article correctly?) at NASA, so you never know how the internal "changing of the guard" may affect how much time/attention is going into a very... secondary payload... like ARISS.

(Trying to find a way to put that nicely... I have no intent of ever complaining in any way about us being able to talk through and to, ISS. It's an amazing facet of our hobby that surprises many non- hams... "They hauled a ham radio up there just so you guys can point antennas at it and talk to it?" It's truly an amazing opportunity many of us take for granted!)

-- Nate Duehr, WY0X nate@natetech.com