Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) Status Report December 19, 2011

1. Kobe, Japan Contact Successful

On Monday, December 12, an Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) contact was held between the Hirano Branch of Kobe Youth Nurturing Council in Kobe-city, Hyogo-pref, Japan and Astronaut Dan Burbank, KC5ZSX on the ISS. The contact highlighted lessons covering the ISS and the environment. An audience of approximately 50 people attended the event. Media coverage included two newspapers.

2. New Proposal Cycle for ARISS-US Contacts

NASA Teaching From Space (TFS) office recently announced a new proposal cycle for ARISS-US contacts. The deadline for submitting proposals is January 30, 2012 for contacts to be held in the July 15, 2012 - January 15, 2013 timeframe. The next informational session will be held on Wednesday, January 11 at 3 pm CST to answer any questions concerning the proposal process. To attend the session or to have questions answered, contact TFS at JSC-TFS-ARISS@mail.nasa.gov or call 281-244-1919.

For more information, visit the TFS Web site: http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/teachingfromspace/students/ariss.h...

3. ARISS-U.S. Proposal Process Makes the News

A NASA Express message which included an item on ARISS contact opportunities for U.S. schools using the proposal process was sent on December 8. The message may be viewed on the NASA blog: http://blogs.nasa.gov/cm/newui/blog/viewpostlist.jsp?blogname=educationexpre...

The NASA Educators Online Network (NEON) posted a link to its ARISS article, "Holiday Ham for NASA." See: http://nasatalk.com/blog/article/bylines/67-dynae-fullwood/1629-holiday-ham-...

The Hartford Hobby Radio Examiner published the story, "Schools can apply for space station radio chats." http://www.examiner.com/hobby-radio-in-hartford/school-applications-welcome-...

4. AMSAT News Service Covers ARISS

The December 18 AMSAT (Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation) News Service bulletin (ANS-352) talks about crewmembers Don Pettit, KD5MDT, Oleg Kononenko, RN3DX and Andre Kuipers, PI9ISS who are preparing to launch to the ISS on December 21. The item, "Soyuz Preparations Continue for Three Ham Crew Launch to ISS" may be found at: http://amsat.org/pipermail/ans/2011/000576.html

5. Amateur Radio Newsline on ARISS

Amateur Radio Newsline posted a few items related to ARISS in its December 16 report #1792. The story, "Ham Radio and Scouting: JOTA 2011 A Big Success" talks about the nearly 3000 scouts who took part in this year's Jamboree on the Air event. Mark Hammond is a "name in the news" in the article, "N8MH Named AMSAT-NA VP of Educational Relations." Both stories may be viewed at: ftp://ftp.arnewsline.org/quincy/News/news.txt

6. ARISS Status on Social Media

This is a reminder that ARISS news is available on Twitter and Facebook. ARISS has over 200 active users on Facebook and over 800 followers on Twitter. See: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Amateur-Radio-on-the-International-Space-Stati... and http://twitter.com/#!/ARISS_status