ISS Fan Club

1. Upcoming School Contact
Robespierre Elementary School in Rueil Malmaison, France has been scheduled for an Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) contact on Thursday, February 21 at 14:21 UTC. Two hundred fifty-six students in grades 1-5 are enrolled at the school. ESA astronaut Léopold Eyharts, FX0STD/KE5FNO, plans to participate in this contact.

2. Astronaut Training Status
The Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) team coordinated two amateur radio school contact simulations between students at Bay Area Charter Elementary in the Houston area and astronauts Mike Fincke, KE5AIT and Koichi Wakata, KC5ZTA at JSC. The two sessions took place on Friday, February 8 via the JSC W5RRR repeater. These two contacts were retransmitted on the Internet Radio Linking Project (IRLP). They were also fed into the Echolink AMSAT (101 377) and JK1ZRW (277 208) servers and received 8 connections, including 2 link nodes and one repeater node from the U.S., Japan, and the Ukraine.

WASHINGTON - NASA has assigned crews for the STS-127 space shuttle mission and the Expedition 19 International Space Station mission. The STS-127 mission will deliver the final components of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Kibo laboratory to the station. Expedition 19 will double the size of the resident crew on the complex, expanding it to six people.

Mark L. Polansky will command the shuttle Endeavour for STS-127, targeted to launch in 2009. Marine Corps Lt. Col. Douglas G. Hurley will serve as the pilot. Mission specialists are Navy Lt. Cmdr. Christopher J. Cassidy, Thomas H. Marshburn, David A. Wolf and Julie Payette, a Canadian Space Agency astronaut.

Image above: The Columbus laboratory is moved into position to be attached to the Harmony module. Photo credit: NASA TV

Today, STS-122 and Expedition 16 crew members used the International Space Station’s robotic arm to attach the European Space Agency’s Columbus laboratory to the station’s Harmony module.

STS-122 Mission Specialists Leland Melvin and Daniel Tani, along with Expedition 16 Flight Engineer Leopold Eyharts, used the orbital outpost’s robotic arm to complete the installation at 4:44 p.m. EST.