July 7:  For an episode named Amateur Space Radio, host Gary Jordan of NASA’s “Houston, We Have a Podcast” interviewed Education Project Manager Courtney Black at the ISS National Lab (INL). Prior to joining INL in 2020, she taught at a school that hosted an ARISS contact.  The podcast covered many facets of ARISS, her school experiences coordinating the ARISS contact, and how it had come about. She recalled that beforehand, she’d suggested to her school a year-long space curricula; the idea was put on hold. A while later, the nearby Ft. Myers Radio Club contacted the school district about ARISS contacts. The district brought Black and the club together and soon, she submitted an ARISS Education Proposal, and then her school was selected for a contact.  During this podcast she re-counted things that happened during the ARISS contact and ended with sharing a former student’s comment, a junior at the time. The young lady told a news reporter, “…this was the catalyst; this was what started me on my trajectory to become an astronaut.” Black said, “…it wasn’t until I saw how it [ARISS] ignited their passions that I realized space inspires: it reaches everyone.”

June 24-26: The ARISS-Europe team put on a strong presence at Ham Radio 2022, an annual convention in Friedrichshafen, Germany with attendance totaling 10,200. ARISS-International Vice Chair Oliver Amend presented three ARISS talks from the Deutscher Amateur Radio Club (DARC) national organization’s stage in the main conference hall. The education forums covered lesson ideas and the Matthias Maurer ARISS school contacts, and one forum was an in-depth seminar. A fourth forum was on doing experiments tied to space. For a fifth forum, Amend invited the Johannes-Kepler Gymnasium (German high school) students and staff to talk about the ARISS contact they hosted. Attendance at all presentations totaled 280. The ARISS team staffed an exhibit booth and talked to 250 people, including some from ESA. ARISS shared a booth with Germany’s AMSAT society that had helped with Maurer’s ARISS school contacts. Booth staff included Amend, ARISS educator Mic Ivancic, DARC’s education team, AMSAT members, and AATiS (a German association of teachers and engineers who developed STEM activities using Amateur Radio on the ground and in space). 

July: The Eaton (CO) Public Library hosted an ARISS contact in June and the staff continues to advertise to the community a summer-long reading program tied to space. The library is also sponsoring its Starship Artemis Game Nights (in-person and online) for teens and adults. 

July 9: An ARISS radio contact took place at the Bauman Moscow State Technical University in Moscow, Russia.  More details will be available for next week’s report.

ARISS Social Media

June 2022–Top ARISS Facebook Reach and Top ARISS Tweet:  both, a post on a Slow Scan TV session

As of June 30, 2022, slight gains were made over May on each ARISS social media platform; total followers were:  

  • ARISS Twitter—16,816
  • ARISS Facebook—7,664
  • ARISS Instagram—433
  • ARISS YouTube—1.68k

June 2022 Facebook

ARISS Upcoming Events 

July 13 Il Cielo Itinerante, ASI Center for Space, Matera, Italy  ARISS contact,  ARISS-Europe team
July 13 2nd Sayama Grp Saitama Council Scouts, Saitama Japan  ARISS contact, ARISS-Japan team
July 16 Celebration of Frigate Nadezhda, Vladivostok, Russia  ARISS contact, ARISS-Russia team