ISS Fan Club

1. ARISS School Contacts - Status
Due to crew schedules onboard the ISS, no Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) contacts are planned at this time. The ARISS team expects contacts to resume once STS-122 launches in early February.

2. Glenden State School Receives Award for ARISS Contact
An Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) contact took place between Glenden State School in Queensland, Australia and Sunita Williams, KD5PLB, on April 4, 2007. On January 26, 2008 the school was presented with an Australia Day Award in recognition of the contact. The mayor who bestowed the award noted that the contact was a very unique educational outreach activity in which the community became involved. ARISS member Shane Lynd, VK4KHZ, submitted an article covering this news to the Wireless Institute of Australia. The story and photos have been posted under News on the ARISS Website. See: http://www.rac.ca/ariss/oindex.htm

3. Astronaut Training Status
On Tuesday, January 29, Mike Barratt, KD5MIJ, participated in an Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) training session at JSC. Basic radio operations and school contacts were covered during the class. Barratt is a backup crewmember for Expedition 18, and the prime Flight Engineer for Expedition 19A.

ARISS plans to conduct an amateur radio school contact simulation utilizing a local school. Students at Bay Area Charter Elementary near JSC will take part in 2 sessions on Friday, February 8 at approximately 9:45 am and 10:10 am CT via the JSC W5RRR repeater. Mike Fincke, KE5AIT, is scheduled to participate in the first contact and Koichi Wakata, KC5ZTA, will participate in the second simulated contact. These two contacts will be retransmitted on the Internet Radio Linking Project (IRLP) and the W5RRR repeater. Actual times may vary depending on how the training session progresses and crewmember availability. This is the first time a school contact simulation training session has been conducted live with students at the other end of the session. If successful, it might be possible to conduct a handful of these sessions each year.

4. ARISS Radio Configured in Crossband Repeater Mode
On Thursday, January 31, cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko, RK3DUP, configured the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) Kenwood radio to crossband repeater mode. . The frequencies are 437.800 MHz uplink and 145.800 MHz downlink. The radio will remain in this mode until it is shut down for the Progress 27 undocking operations on February 4.

5. ARRL Article on ARISS Chairman
The American Radio Relay League (ARRL) ran an article on Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) Chairman Frank Bauer in its ARRL Letter. To view the story, “ARISS International Chairman Moves into New Position at NASA,” see: http://www.arrl.org/arrlletter/08/0201/

6. SuitSat-1 Certificates
The Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) team has begun to distribute certificates for participation in the SuitSat-1 project. Additional certificates will be mailed as participant lists are received. SuitSat-1, an amateur radio satellite housed in a Russian Orlan spacesuit, was deployed on February 3, 2006 and received extensive media coverage and over 9.5 million hits on the SuitSat Web site.

Source ARISS Weekly Status