August: Sussex County Charter School for Technology (Sparta, NJ) sponsored “Making Connections,” its first week-long amateur radio camp. This was a STEM education program as part of preparations for the school’s February 2022 ARISS contact. The STEM teacher, a Society of Women Engineers Advisor, said, “…best of all [at the camp], students did hands-on electronic activities.” The 6th through 8th graders discovered electronic basics and learned to make Morse code radio contacts mentored by Sussex County Amateur Radio Club members. ARISS volunteer Fred Kemmerer drove from New Hampshire to show students how to remotely operate his home radio station, making voice radio contacts with youth in London and elsewhere. He taught students to make amateur radio satellite contacts and led students in a direction-finding hunt to locate a hidden transmitter. An ARRL Director for New York and New Jersey taught students how she uses radio-control drones. Students’ parents came to camp the last day to watch their children showcase activities they’d mastered. Teachers will now begin infusing classes with activities on communications and space exploration. The school formed an amateur radio club dedicated to enriching students’ physical science learning experiences by having them set up a ham radio station to make more local and worldwide radio contacts.
October 18: Students at Jean Alloitteau School in Vinça, France listened intently as Thomas Pesquet said he was ready for their questions and answered 20. Media on hand, along with 60 other attendees, included France-3 TV, TV4, radio stations France-Bleu and Pyrenees FM, and the newspaper, L’independent. The ARISS radio contact was live streamed for 486 viewers and within two days’ time, 1,094 people had viewed it. The URL is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVVxz4RFLVE. The school integrated space and communications lessons related to ARISS in an interdisciplinary curriculum (French, biology, mathematics, physics, technology, visual arts, music).
October 2: People enjoying a beach day during the 2021 Artevento International Kite Festival in Cervia, Italy got an extra bonus when an Italian ARISS volunteer brought a handheld ham radio and antenna to the beach. Passersby were able to listen as he recorded Thomas Pesquet answering CUST University Space Center (Toulouse, France) students’ questions. A group of beach-goers watched and listened. The ARISS volunteer posted a video online later that day and 33 people watched it.
October 12: The next ARISS SSTV (picture downlink) session is tentatively planned for mid-November. The downlinks will include historical Lunar missions—robotic and human spaceflight. When this idea was suggested by the ARISS-USA team, ARISS-Russia team member Sergey Samburov presented a photo showing Cosmonaut Oleg Artemiev in the ISS Cupola reading On the Moon, the writings by Sergey’s great-grandfather Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, a space visionary and philosopher. Tsiolkovsky developed the rocket equation used by rocket scientists the world over and in the 1800s made predictions on future Lunar operations. The photo also shows off one of the ARISS CubeSat satellites built by the South West State University (SWSU) students in Kursk, Russia. Artemiev deployed some of the CubeSats in 2018.
October 13: Last week’s report stated that 633 French students viewed the ARISS radio contact livestream for two schools in Carquefou (Ecole Louis Armand and Institut Universitaire de Technologie-IUT) and one school in Thouare Sur Loire (Collège Les Sables D’Or). The ARISS team learned that IUT streamed the ARISS contact to all of its classes, garnering nearly 5,000 views!
ARISS Upcoming Events
Oct 28 Tarwater Elementary School, Chandler AZ, ARISS contact, ARISS-US team