June 10: St Joseph’s Primary School in Bombala, NSW, Australia, hosted an ARISS contact with Shane Kimbrough. A group of 124 parents, friends, students, and teachers watched the event, which was livestreamed, although the count of viewers is not yet available. The Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC Radio National) and an area newspaper interviewed St Joseph’s Primary School Principal Susan Tighe and then aired and posted stories. The ARISS Technical Mentor commented that he had received a telephone call from Ms. Tighe who sincerely thanked the ARISS international team of volunteers for such a wonderful opportunity for the students, and stated that the audio quality of the ARISS radio contact was “amazing.”  A very young student, Essie, printed a four-sentence letter to her teacher that included this statement: “I am going to be an Adnoot [astronaut].”

June 14: Sterling Middle School in Sterling, VA hosted a recent ARISS contact and decided to create a video commemoration of their experiences revolving around the contact. The faculty produced the video to highlight educational projects tied to the ARISS contact that students engaged in (such as launching and tracking a medium altitude balloon), to honor all the students who spoke with Shannon Walker, and to thank sponsors, including NASA. In addition to the youth from Sterling Middle School involved in the learning activities, students from Sterling Elementary School and Guilford Elementary School had been involved in studies and were invited to ask questions during the ARISS contact; they were honored in the video, also. The 3.5-minute video is at: https://www.lcps.org/Page/236758.

June 9-10: A follow-up of last week’s Moscow Aviation Institute’s downlinked Slow Scan TV session shows an increase in the number of participants. Each image submitted must be reviewed before final posting to the ARISS SSTV Gallery for the public to see – the URL is https://www.spaceflightsoftware.com/ARISS_SSTV/ – so the total number of people downloading images is difficult to know until a few days after the session. The number of space enthusiasts, educators, students, shortwave listeners, and ham operators in Russia, Europe, South America and North America who downloaded images totaled 558. They submitted 1,662 images they received.

June 11 – 12: Three ARISS-Russia radio contacts were scheduled the past week. On June 12, one contact was conducted under the Gagarin From Space education initiative and was for students from the cities of Great Ustyug and Velikiy Ustyug in the Vologda Oblast of Russia. An ARISS contact was to be held for students in Lipetsk, Russia, but ARISS-Russia reported the contact was unsuccessful, and a third ARISS contact was removed from the schedule.

Upcoming Events

  • June 17 Collège A. Camus & U. Paris-Saclay, La Norville & St. Aubin, France; ARISS-Europe team
  • June 21-26 ARISS SSTV Session; ARISS-International
  • June 22-25 ARISS-International Annual worldwide meeting; ARISS-International      
  • June 25       Ecole de Bellême, Pôle scolaire Igé/Gué de la Chaine, & Ecole de Nocé, Bellême, Belforêt en Perche & Perche en Nocé, France, ARISS contact; ARISS-Europe team