An International Space Station school contact has been planned with participants at North Dakota Space Grant Consortium (NDSGC), Grand Forks, North Dakota on 10 March. The event is scheduled to begin at approximately 19:08 UTC. It is recommended that you start listening approximately 10 minutes before this time. The duration of the contact is approximately 9 minutes and 30 seconds. The contact will be a telebridge between NA1SS and W6SRJ. The contact should be audible over the west coast of the U.S. Interested parties are invited to listen in on the 145.80 MHz downlink. The contact is expected to be conducted in English.

The University of North Dakota (UND) is located in Grand Forks, a vibrant eastern North Dakota college town of 53,000 located on the Red River of the North. Approximately 15,000 students are enrolled in over 225 fields of undergraduate and graduate study at UND. The beautiful 549-acre wooded campus is a unique blend of classic ivy-covered halls, high-tech complexes, and research centers. The University has earned an international reputation for its academic and research programs.

In the early 1980s, John D. Odegard, the Dean of the College of Aerospace Sciences, invited Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the Moon, to come to UND to help organize a space education program within the college. Aldrin's contributions included recommending the appointment of Dr. David Webb, a member of the 1985-1986 Presidential Commission on Space, to design the space studies program and to serve as the first Chair of the Department. In 1986, Dr. David Webb initiated the founding of the Department of Space Studies as an integral part of the UND College of Aerospace Sciences. Today, the Department of Space Studies has approximately 25 M.S. students on campus and more than 100 students in the distance program. Nearly 700 Master of Science Degrees in Space Studies have been awarded since the program's inception in 1987. Space Studies graduates have careers in a variety of different space-related disciplines including government, business, science, law, medicine, education, military, and public relations. In fall of 2012, the 25th anniversary year of the Space Studies Department, the Ph.D. program in Aerospace Sciences was established in collaboration with the Department of Aviation.

The Department of Space Studies is also headquarters to two state-wide NASA-funded programs: the ND NASA EPSCoR, which is aimed at enhancing NASA-relevant research capabilities in the state and the North Dakota Space Grant Consortium, which promotes STEM education at both K-12 and college levels in North Dakota through "hands on" projects and provides student summer internships at NASA centers, scholarships, and research fellowships.

Leading up to the ARISS call, members of the Space Grant team and college student volunteers made several visits to classrooms to get students excited about the event. They worked with 2nd, 3rd, and 4th graders at Emerado Elementary in Emerado, ND, 2nd graders at Highland Elementary in Crookston, MN, 3rd graders at Century Elementary in Grafton, ND, 4th graders at Century Elementary in Grand Forks, ND, and 5th graders at Discover Elementary in Grand Forks, ND. These hands-on activities included building and launching rockets, building and testing parachutes like the ones used on NASA's Orion capsule, designing and testing neutrally buoyant objects, and working in teams to discover and explore new planets like NASA's Kepler Space Telescope.

These students along with a few more K-12 classrooms, and University of North Dakota students will be attending the event early March. The questions will come from students in kindergarten all the way through graduate school. Many of the students attending the event come from smaller rural communities, so it is truly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to participate in such an event. Some families from the area will be attending as well, along with the winning 10th grade team from Space Grant's high altitude balloon competition last fall, as one of the prizes for the competition was a question slot for a member of the team. There are over 350 students, teachers, and chaperones currently registered for the event.

Participants will ask as many of the following questions as time allows:

1. What do you do for fun on the space station?

2. What activities do you do to keep your muscles strong in micro-gravity?

3. Is it challenging to communicate with astronauts from other countries

while working on the space station?

4. What kind of training does an astronaut have to go through and how was

your experience?

5. Besides micro-gravity, what experimental conditions does the

International Space Station provide that cannot be replicated here on

Earth?

6. What was the hardest part of becoming an astronaut and what helped you

get past this obstacle?

7. What advice would you give to students, such as myself, who wish to work

for NASA one day?

8. What features of North Dakota, such as lakes, snow cover, or oil flares,

can you see from the International Space Station?

9. Do you feel disconnected from the real-world whenever you hear about any

major news story? If so, how do you find ways to reconnect?

10. We recently learned that astronauts make regular journal entries for

research purposes. Do you find this exercise beneficial to your time on

station?

11. What is your current interaction with medical professionals, regarding

your health in space?

12. If you've seen or read "The Martian", how realistic was it compared to

how things actually are on the space station?

13. Have you always wanted to go to space and become an astronaut? If so,

what inspired you?

14. How often do you go on space walks and do you ever get scared?

15. What kind of experiments are you conducting on the space station?

16. We learned about Scott Kelley's year in space. How long have you been

onboard and would you consider staying for a full year?

PLEASE CHECK THE FOLLOWING FOR MORE INFORMATION ON ARISS UPDATES:

Visit ARISS on Facebook. We can be found at Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS).

To receive our Twitter updates, follow @ARISS_status

Next planned event(s):

1. Booker T. Washington Senior High, Miami, Florida, direct via W4SVI

ISS callsign is presently scheduled to be NA1SS

The scheduled astronaut is Timothy Peake KG5BVI

Contact is a go for: Mon 2016-03-14 15:48:48 UTC

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 International Space Station (ISS). In the United States, sponsors are the Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation (AMSAT), the American Radio Relay League (ARRL), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The primary goal of ARISS is to promote exploration of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) topics by organizing scheduled contacts via amateur radio between crew members aboard the ISS and students in classrooms or informal education venues. With the help of experienced amateur radio volunteers, ISS crews speak directly with large audiences in a variety of public forums. Before and during these radio contacts, students, teachers, parents, and communities learn about space, space technologies, and amateur radio. For more information, see www.ariss.org, www.amsat.org, and www.arrl.org.

Thank you & 73,

David - AA4KN

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