November 22:  Students from 63 schools in 12 nation states in the Caribbean and Central America engaged in an ARISS radio contact and related lessons. This was done with the backing of the Disaster Fighters (a group that hosts a communications platform with a goal to improve natural disaster preparedness and build resilience), NASA, and other disaster-related groups. Josh Cassada supported the contact; he answered 12 questions. The students hailed from: Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Cayman Islands, Commonwealth of the Bahamas, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Panama, St. Kitts & St. Nevis, St. Lucia, and Trinidad and Tobago.  Shortly before ARISS established the radio link, several VIPs from NASA and the disaster groups gave short talks to the young listeners on the groups’ roles in natural disaster work. Some of the schools were able to tie into the YouTube connection and an ARISS radio ground station linked them to the ISS’s ARISS radio. The livestream was transmitted simultaneously in English and Spanish by sponsors (1600 views) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToGKtGaBcck. The ARISS radio ground station in Italy streamed the activity (261 views), as well.  The schools’ students submitted 409 questions and the ones chosen were related to disasters, natural hazard monitoring, climate change, and improving preparedness.  All schools had led educational activities promoted by the Disaster Fighters. Groups supporting the initiative included the NASA Earth Science Applied Sciences Disaster program, the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (managed by the World Bank), the UNDRR Regional Office for the Americas and the Caribbean, the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency, and the Coordination Centre for Disaster Prevention in Central America & the Dominican Republic.  Prior to the contact the CaribPR Wire online news service posted an extensive and very nice article at https://caribpr.com/students-from-the-caribbean-and-central-america-will-connect-with-an-astronaut-on-the-international-space-station/.

November 18: Among the many activities at the recent All-Russian Youth Space Festival titled “Vostochny Cosmofest from Roscosmos” at Amur State University in Blagoveshchensk, Russia, one event featured a crowd of students taking part in an ARISS radio contact. The youth asked questions of all three orbiting cosmonauts who took turns answering: Dimitri Petelin, Anna Kikina, and Sergey Prokopyev. Special guests attending included ARISS-Russia’s Sergey Samburov, cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Petr Dubrov, the adviser to the ASU director’s office, a university dean, and a department instructor. As with other ARISS-Russian sponsored ARISS contacts, this one was scheduled by Russia’s Mission Control Center-Moscow.

November 21: Students at the Ural State University of Railway Engineering in Yekaterinburg, Russia took part in an ARISS contact with 11 of them asking questions of Sergey Prokopyev. The ARISS session was scheduled by Russia’s Mission Control Center-Moscow to honor the 66th anniversary of the formation of the university.  Two adults assisted with the radio contact, which was sponsored by the ARISS-Russia team.

November 23: An ARISS contact was hosted by the Five Bridges Junior High School in Stillwater Lake, NS, Canada. Details will be available for next week’s report.  

ARISS Upcoming Events
Dec 8 ARISS Contact: British School in the Netherlands, The Hague, ARISS-Europe Team