June 24: ARISS educator Gina Kwid and a co-teacher gave a presentation on ARISS and space transportation at i-STEM, an annual four-day professional development conference. PK-12 teachers apply to the Idaho STEM Action Center to be selected to attend i-STEM. Gina spoke about ARISS and her co-teacher spoke about Maker transportation activity. Viewers included 12 educators and 1 principal.

June 21-30:  Youth from four California high schools attending the GearUp Tech Camp held at California State University, Fullerton, learned about ARISS and radio communications in space from ARISS educator Melissa Pore.  Students were ages 9 to 17 and educators were junior high and high school educators.  Pore employed hands-on activities for learning about radio signals, radio waves, codes sent via Morse code and light, SCaN’s Deep Space Network, satellites, different types of antennas and the advantages of each type, and guiding students in building mini-models of antennas and making bookmarks and monogram key chains with their names in Morse code.   

July 8: Girl Scouts of Citrus (GS of Citrus) based in Orlando, Florida, in collaboration with Spacekids Global (SKG) and the ProXops company, has an ARISS contact the week of July 19. In preparation for the ARISS contact, GS of Citrus developed the Making Space For Girls program, utilizing hands-on STEAM activities to inspire regional and nationwide Girl Scout groups during the long months of COVID-19. Three of the many activities included:

  • Send Postcards to Space–GS of Citrus partnered with Blue Origin’s For the Future in Space Engineering. 100 Girl Scouts from 17 states signed up to create ideas, designs, and discussions for new inventions, then drew their designs to be flown on a Blue Origin New Shepard rocket. Additionally, 37 adults received training, offering the program to their troops, leading to 380 more girls participating.
  • Junior Ranger Spaceflight Explorer program by NASA and the National Park Service–GS of Citrus hosted 59 scouts and siblings in this girl-led program of interactive undertakings focused on space, leading to the completion of their Spaceflight Junior Ranger patch.
  • Virgin Galactic presentations–CEOs of SKG and GS of Citrus, both Virgin Galactic astronauts, spoke to 150 Girl Scouts about their training and excitement for space.

June 21 & 25: ARISS educator Melissa Pore gave two presentations to youth at the Milton Space Camp in Washington DC.  A total of 50 students of lower elementary school age and 10 elementary school educators learned all about space communications. The first presentation covered ARISS and amateur radio in space.  The second presentation was on how to build models of satellites.

July 5: ARISS educator Micol Ivancic gave a presentation on the ARISS program to students of Corinaldesi-Padovano School in Senigallia, Italy. Attendees included 30 students ages 18 and 19, 14 educators, and 3 delegates from the European Erasmus “We Shape Our Future” student program. Ivancic spoke about ARISS voice and packet radio and demonstrated how the students can decode ARISS SSTV (picture) downlinks. She covered software defined radios and radio software apps.  

July: Two teachers at schools in France that hosted ARISS contacts a few years ago wrote a script for a comic about ARISS. The teachers had joined the ARISS French Workgroup in 2019 to assist in selecting and preparing French schools for Thomas Pesquet’s ESA Alpha Mission. The two teachers felt a comic could help schools understand how ARISS students learned about space communications, STEM, and ARISS. They worked with a graphic artist student and French ARISS team members and developed a three-part comic, a section for 1st to 3rd grade, 4th and 5th grade, and 6th to 9th grade. The comic was published and copyrighted and sent to ESA. CNES posted a long item on its web site about: the comic, ARISS program, and recent ARISS French school contacts. The web item titled “Hello ISS, Here are the French Students” is at https://missionalpha.cnes.fr/fr/mission-alpha/les-experiences-made-france/education.  The comic is at:  https://www.ariss-f.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/diffusion-BD-Sarah-Marie-Marie-Lydie.pdf 

Upcoming Events

  • July 14  camp at Southwest Technical State U., Kursk, Russia, ARISS contact, ARISS Russia team
  • July 14  Youth On The Air-camp, Cincinnati OH, ARISS contact, ARISS-US team
  • July 21  SpaceKids Global with Girl Scouts of Citrus, Winter Park FL, ARISS contact, ARISS-US team