September 24: Youth at a summer camp offered by the SPDW Voortrekker Movement in Oranjeville, South Africa participated in an ARISS contact with Akihiko Hoshide. He answered 10 of the campers’ questions. Following the contact, the ground station ham radio operator answered 9 more questions from the youth. The audience totaled 500. The livestream garnered 457 viewers, and within a week’s time, viewers totaled 532. A number of media services covered the event: two newspapers, a TV station, and two radio stations. SPDW Voortrekkers sponsor several annual camps serving South Africa and Namibia youth ages 5 to 28. At this camp, lessons featured astronomy for 260 students. Area amateur radio operators came to the camp to help youth earn their Voortrekker ham radio operator badge, get on the airwaves, and take part in ham radio lessons that could help them acquire their ham licenses.
September 27: The Amur Mission Control Center at Amur State University in Blagoveshchensk, Russia invited 15 young students to come see the facility and to host them for an ARISS contact with Cosmonaut Pyotr Dubrov. Sergey Samburov, head of Russian radio amateur activities on the ISS and chief specialist of RSC Energia, took the lead in organizing the youths’ activities. ARISS-Russia sponsors the Gagarin from Space studies for students.
September 28: ARISS-Russia’s leader Sergey Samburov performed ARISS training on radio operations at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in the Moscow Oblast, Star City in Russia for two astronauts, Warren Hoburg and Stephen Bowen. Hoburg came to NASA in 2017; Bowen is a seasoned astronaut. Both are back-up crew members for future SpaceX flights; currently, their upcoming assignments are under discussion.
September 27: ARISS educator Linda Nowicki was accepted as a judge for the AIAA—American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’—2021-2022 Classroom Grants program. AIAA welcomes educators’ proposals for creative STEM initiatives and projects they’d like to establish; AIAA awards funding for the top proposals.
ARISS Upcoming Events
Oct 5 Prescott Unified School District schools, Prescott AZ, ARISS contact, ARISS-US team