October 6: The Space Agency of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Azercosmos, hosted the first-ever ARISS contact in that country. Students came from No. 149 Secondary School in Baku as did some 8th to 11th graders from more area schools. Andreas Mogensen answered 7 questions. 54 students, 9 faculty members, and 6 from the community watched the action. The ARISS contact coincided with two space events in Baku—the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) and World Space Week 2023. Media coverage included Ictimai TV, CBC, OXU.az, Report Information Agency (https://report.az/ikt/azerbaycanli-mektebliler-beynelxalq-kosmik-stansiya-ile-elaqe-qura-bilibler/), and Azercosmos’ global-wide PR—see its Instagram posts at
https://www.instagram.com/p/CyEAggmqAcG/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==. Azerbaijan’ national point of contact for the Space Generation Advisory Council, Nadir Atayev, assisted with the ARISS contact and shared with students part of a talk he gave on space engineering at a workshop sponsored by the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs with the International Astronautical Federation in conjunction with the IAC. The Azerbaijan Central Radio Club and the Ganja Collective Radio Club hams organized the radio set up. Earlier, No. 149 students participated in regional competitions for exact and technical sciences; faculty said these helped youth build “a spirit of scientific curiosity and inspiration in STEAM science.”
October 6: The ARISS radio contact for Technological University Dublin in Dublin, Ireland saw Jasmin Moghbeli answering 18 student questions. The university had students viewing the livestream at six area schools as part of Ireland’s World Space Week activities. 2,744 people watched the action during the ARISS contact or via the livestream. Another 1,132 viewed the recording within a few days’ time. A university staffer said: “I’ve been laughing and bawling my eyes out watching the ARISS contact video—what an amazing thing for these kids!” The university posted a short video on X of the kids waiting to hear Moghbeli’s voice; the post got 5,147 views! 19 news sources posted reports with two being NewsTalk.com (https://www.newstalk.com/news/dublin-deis-schools-to-talk-to-international-space-station-1512651) and DublinPeople.com (https://dublinpeople.com/news/education/articles/2023/10/06/iss-schoolchildren-chat/). An Irish Times reporter wrote, ”Crew 7 is a multinational team — a beacon of global cooperation in a time of uncertainty and conflict.” The six schools take advantage of Delivering Equality of Opportunity (DEIS), described as: an action plan for educational inclusion that brings together a number of programs and helps identify and regularly review levels of disadvantage, and improves pupils’ learning experiences and outcomes. The students had learned about orbital mechanics, how the ARISS radios would connect to the ISS, and heard engineer and scientist Dr. Niamh Shaw describe her exciting Mars science mission in the Kalahari Desert, Botswana.
October 10: An ARISS contact in Belgium was hosted for students at the Belgian Defence Koninklijke School voor Onderofficieren (KSOO) in Sint-Truiden and at IEPS (students from Lycée Albert Libiez and the Jurbise Social Promotion School) in Colfontaine. KSOO is a major non-commissioned officers’ school and training center while the IEPS is for high school students and life-long learners, ages 15 and older. Jasmin Moghbeli answered 12 students’ questions, leaving time for them to thank her before loss of the radio signal. Reporters from three TV stations, one radio station, and a written press company were on hand. Along with the ARISS contact, the audience at both sites listened to STEM presentations. Colfontaine had organized three conferences as part of Space Week and hosted a ham radio satellite demo, a digital ham radio demo, and more radio-related activities. Two online news agencies ran stories, Nieuwsblad.BE and TÉLÉMB.BE, with the latter posting a short video at https://www.telemb.be/article/station-spatiale-internationale.
October 11: ARISS social media leader Jim Reed announced that ARISS Facebook has crossed the threshold of 10,000+ followers. He thanked the team for its assistance and thanked those who look to ARISS social media for the latest updates on our STEAM-based activities.
October 5: ARISS Director of Education Tanya Anderson held an ARISS Proposal Webinar with other ARISS leaders to guide US educators wanting to know more about ARISS school contacts. In addition to the 4 ARISS team members, 29 people tuned in to the webinar. Educators, formal and informal, watched a PowerPoint presentation and asked many questions related to writing an ARISS Education Proposal in hopes of winning an ARISS contact in second half 2024.
ARISS Upcoming Events
Oct 17: Valley Stream South High School, Valley Stream, NY—ARISS contact, ARISS-US Team
Oct 18: St Peter CE Junior School, Broadstairs, Kent, UK—ARISS contact, ARISS-Europe Team