July 14: The highlight of the 2021 Youth On The Air in the Americas week-long camp was an ARISS contact supported by Akihiko Hoshide. He answered 15 of the youths’ questions. The camp, held in West Chester, OH, attracted 24 high school and college students from across the US who listened to the ARISS contact along with 14 staff members and volunteers who are formal and informal educators. The event was livestreamed with many viewers leaving congratulatory Chat messages; within 24 hours viewers totaled 384. The URL is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtMMo6ryU0U&t=1s. The campers bond over a love for technology, wireless, and radio skills. They enjoyed building their own receivers, triangulating the location of a radio transmitter, and building antennas. One of the first camp activities was launching four balloons with ham radio payloads, one, a high altitude balloon, and the others, mid-altitude. ARISS volunteer and brand-new university grad Ruth Willet taught a radio lesson on ARISS and satellite operations, guiding youth in testing their skills at tracking satellites and trying on-the-air activities that ARISS offers.
July 12: ARISS educator Diane Warner, whose school hosted an ARISS radio contact in late 2019, presented a webinar to a group of teachers about her ARISS contact and its great positive effects on students and the community. The 30 teachers listening were participating in a four-day professional development workshop on wireless communications in Newington, CT, sponsored by the American Radio Relay League (ARRL). ARISS team member Rosalie White handled the Q&A portion of the webinar.
July 12: Two ARISS educators from Estes Park (CO) Elementary School, who led their students through many STEM lessons in preparation for their February 2021 ARISS contact took part in ARRL’s four-day professional development workshop. One of the Estes Park teachers is transitioning to junior high this fall and the two want a STEM pipeline going from elementary through eighth grade. Some of the hands-on electronics activities they did at the workshop included create and test tape-measure yagi antennas, populate circuit boards from electronic kits, and put together robots and learn to program them to maneuver through a special course.
July 14: A Russian ARISS contact tied to the About Gagarin From Space program was held for The Children’s University camp hosted at the Southwest Technical State University in Kursk.
July 6-8: ARISS teacher Micol Ivancic was thrilled to hear Tim Peake’s presentation while she attended the 2021 ESA Teach with Space Conference because he included details on ARISS. About 300 teachers attended, and when they asked him for more specific details on ARISS, Micol provided information, including useful URLs. Another notable conference presenter was ARISS team member David Honess who talked about AstroPi and some related teacher experiments. Attendees had been asked to submit classroom STEM activities to be shared with fellow participants—Micol provided a video of her school’s ARISS contact with Paolo Nespoli.
Upcoming Events
July 21 SpaceKids Global with Girl Scouts of Citrus, Winter Park FL, ARISS contact, ARISS-US team
July 22 Seinan Gakuin Junior Senior High School, Fukuoka, Japan, ARISS-Japan team