October 24: Fort Myers, FL suffered a direct strike by Hurricane Ian on September 28, less than a month prior to an ARISS contact scheduled for the city’s Canterbury School.  Faculty, students (a huge portion still homeless), and area amateur radio club operators put in a major effort amid the immense damage to ensure the ARISS contact could be carried out—giving students a huge boost to morale. On contact day, Josh Cassada answered 14 student questions plus 1 from a teacher. A senior class student who is interested in engineering and robotics, helped with the radios and said, “It is quite miraculous … a remarkable opportunity.”  Those on hand watching the contact numbered 200 and another 190 watched the livestream. A week later, 918 people had viewed the recording. NBC-TV, WINK-TV, and PBS radio station WGCU covered the event. A link to NBC’s coverage is https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=X-rYfEojW0w&feature=emb_title. The head of the school, Rick Kirschner, said they had declared this fall as their “Semester in Space” and researched “all angles of space exploration and the future and all the exciting possibilities.” The curriculum centered on rockets, radios, the ISS and exploration.

October 19: An ARISS contact took place at the Chief Whitecap Elementary School in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. Josh Cassada answered 18 of the youths’ questions.  A reported 1,000 students in the building saw the event, watching via a video hookup. Following the contact, a faculty member reported: “Some adults in the audience were moved to tears. Josh Cassada gave excellent responses … and he used each student’s name. The whole school was so excited after the contact that each teacher abandoned afternoon lessons to do follow-up space activities and research the things they learned from Josh.” The school partners with the Whitecap Dakota First Nation, embracing and integrating native culture, language and traditions into the curriculum. The school inserted the topic of space through all core subjects for all grades, with a goal of this ARISS contact being to increase students’ interest in the science and technology of space exploration.

October 21: ARISS Director of Engineering Randy Berger gave an ARISS presentation at the annual AMSAT-NA Symposium held in Bloomington, MN.  Randy’s talk attracted 30 listeners; he gave an overview and an update of ARISS.  During the day, he networked with other attendees, including a high school young lady and her family; she is very active in satellite communications and was interested in ARISS.

October 21:  ARISS volunteer Luis Funes in Argentina organized a follow-up conference two weeks after the ARISS contact hosted at Esperanza Base in Antarctica. Teachers, students, the head of the Coronel Morales Base, and ARISS volunteer Marcelo Teruel were asked to evaluate their experiences with the historic first-ever Antarctica ARISS contact. All of them were very positive about the contact and the related learning activities.

Social Media for September

ARISS’s previous September Social Media report listed number of followers on platforms. Here are more details:

  • Top Tweet in September (gave details on an ARISS contact) earned 2,045 Impressions
  • Top Facebook Posts in September (gave details on ARISS contacts) earned 3,398 Reaches

ARISS Upcoming Events  
Nov 4: Harel Educational Campus, Holon, Israel, ARISS-Europe Team
Nov 20: Ural State University, Yekaterinburg Russia, ARISS-Russia Team