ARISS Weekly Status Report – 12/5/2022 – ARISS | Amateur Radio on the International Space Station

November 28: Students at West Ferris Intermediate Secondary School in North Bay, ON, Canada will never forget their ARISS radio contact where they asked questions of Koichi Wakata. He answered 14 questions that had been selected out of 160 submitted by students who were in the audience. The ARISS contact was covered by Bay Today online news, Canada Today online news, Northern Ontario CTV news, and CBC radio. During the Northern Ontario CTV news interview, grade 8 science teacher Jason Henstridge said, “There are always students who get inspired by things like this, so we’re really excited to give them the opportunity to do that.” He had led them in lessons on gravity, velocity, and microgravity. Students also learned about radio communications, researching wave propagation, wavelength and frequency during Near Space programs where students planned and executed stratospheric balloon launches. They used the radio Automatic Packet Reporting System for tracking balloons’ payloads.

November 28: Escola Naval (Brazil Navy Academy) located on Ilha de Villegagnon near Rio de Janeiro, Brazil hosted an ARISS contact for midshipmen. Eight from among those who will graduate this year were selected to ask questions during the contact with Josh Cassada and he answered 16. After the contact an attendee said there was a “feeling of accomplishment and everything ended in celebration, joy, photos, and an unforgettable experience for everyone, and especially for the aspirants!” 70 people attended the event. Two livestreams were available for the general public and the total number of viewers for both was 279. An article about the event is at https://qtc.ecra.club/2022/11/escola-naval-rj-faz-contato-com-astronauta-a-bordo-da-ISS.html. The academy, a higher education military school, aims to train candidates as officers for the navy.

November 23: Students (620 of them) at Five Bridges Junior High School in Stillwater Lake, NS, Canada gathered for an ARISS contact with Josh Cassada who answered 14 students’ questions. Before talking to him they listened to a young man and young lady who are engineering students at Dalhousie University in Halifax who described a CubeSat called Low Orbit Reconnaissance & Imaging Satellite that they had developed. The presentation and the ARISS contact were livestreamed on two platforms garnering over 225 views, and within 5 days, total views climbed to 692 views. Students had engaged in a curriculum that prepared them for their ARISS contact; some projects included constructing models of planets in our solar system, tracking the health of tomato plants grown from seeds flown on the ISS, and researching black holes. The youth learned about the Artemis and Gateway programs, and area amateur radio operators provided students with a series of lessons on radio communications.

November 28: Following a curriculum of space science and studying space careers, students at Amur State University in Blagoveshchensk, Russia took part in an ARISS radio contact with Sergey Prokopyev. 20 people were on hand for the event, which was coordinated by ARISS-Russia’s Sergey Samburov.

November 30: Students engaged in the About Gagarin From Space lessons, which were followed by an ARISS contact event at GBOU Secondary Educational School No. 491 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Participants included 30 students and they spoke with Anna Kikina.

November 30: Another school with students engaging in the About Gagarin From Space lessons was Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University in Kaliningrad, Russia. 10 students talked with Anna Kikina. As with other ARISS-Russian sponsored ARISS contacts, this one was scheduled by Russia’s Mission Control Center-Moscow.

ARISS Social Media

ARISS’s new volunteer on the social media team has begun posting on Mastodon and will begin tracking the metrics. Next month, ARISS will report on those.

November’s top posts and November’s total metrics are below.