Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) Status Report August 22, 2011

1. Upcoming School Contacts

An Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) contact has been scheduled for Hochtaunusschule in Oberursel, Hessen, Germany on Thursday, August 25 at 08:19 UTC via telebridge station LU8YY in Argentina. The school provides both general education and vocational training, such as electrical, metal and mechanical engineering, as well as information technology (IT). The contact will be held to interest high school students in wireless technology.

Vision Australia, located in Enfield, New South Wales, Australia has been scheduled for an Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) contact on Monday, August 29 at 08:47 UTC via station WH6PN in Hawaii. Vision Australia is a not for profit agency that provides low vision and blindness services to the community in Australia. There are many children who are blind or have low vision who receive services from the agency.

An Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) contact has been scheduled for Merritt Island High School, Merritt Island, Florida on Tuesday, August 30 at 18:06 UTC. Sixty of the high school students are members of da Vinci Academy of Aerospace Technology and take part in the "Project Lead the Way" engineering curriculum. The students will study engineering principles of the International Space Station through their courses entitled "Introduction to Engineering," "Principles of Engineering," "Aerospace Engineering" and "Digital Electronics." The entire year's curriculum will be dedicated to the aerospace engineering topic to prepare for the contact, and weekly labs will make the topic real (study of force/motion, circuit boards, ISS construction/engineering, ISS orbit, ham radio engineering, sound waves, and layers of the atmosphere).

2. Successful Contact with Yokohama School

On Tuesday, August 16, youth from Yokohama Kurata Elementary School in Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan participated in an Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) contact. ISS Astronaut Satoshi Furukawa, KE5DAW answered fourteen questions posed to him by the students as an audience of 500 listened in. The contact highlighted the students' lessons about space, the ISS and radio communications. Among the media coverage received were 3 television stations, including NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation), 3 newspapers and 2 magazines.

3. NASA Article on ARISS Contact with Caribbean Youth

On Monday, August 8, an ARISS contact was held with students attending the Caribbean Youth Science Forum (CYSF), a regional event sponsored by the National Institute for Higher Education, Research, Science & Technology (NIHERST) located in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, West Indies. This year the forum hosted 250 students from several Caribbean countries. A NASA story about the event has been posted to its Web site. See: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/news/ARISS_Trinidad.html

4. ARISS International Team Meeting Held

The ARISS International Team monthly teleconference was held on Tuesday, August 16. Attendees discussed the upcoming face-to-face meeting to be held in Houston in October and the status of ARISSat-1. Minutes have been posted. See: http://www.rac.ca/ariss/arisstel2011-08-16.htm

5. AMSAT Covers ARISSat-1

On August 21, the AMSAT (Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation) News Service bulletin (ANS-233) posted an item about ARISSat-1, providing information on how to experiment with recorded files. To learn more, see "BPSK-1000 Test Files and Downlink SDR Passband Recording Available" at: http://amsat.org/pipermail/ans/2011/000544.html

6. Amateur Radio Newsline on ARISSat-1

On August 19, the Amateur Radio Newsline Report 1775 included a couple of items concerning ARISSat-1. To view "ARISSat-1 Dropping to Low Power Even in Sunlight" and "Chicken Little Contest for ARISSat 1," see: ftp://ftp.arnewsline.org/quincy/News/news.txt

7. ARRL QST on ARISS

The American Radio Relay League (ARRL) September 2011 QST had a blurb in the "In Brief" column about astronauts garnering their Amateur Radio licenses in order to participate in ARISS educational radio contacts: Michael Hopkins, KF5LJG Takuya Onishi, KF5LKS Gregory Wiseman, KF5 LKT Jeremy Hasen, KF5LKU and Kjell Lindgren, upgrading his KO5MOS license to General