Author: cmejackson500

May 7: Partnering with Green Bank (WV) Observatory (GBO—an NSF facility), the Green Bank Elementary and Middle School (GBEMS), hosted an ARISS contact for students with Mark Vande Hei. An audience of 40 listened as he answered 15 student questions. Prior to the radio contact, programming featured greetings taped by National Science Foundation Director Sethuraman Panchanathan, GBEMS Principal Julie Shiflet who said the project was a good way to encourage students to pursue STEM careers, and US Senators Shelley Moore Capito and Joe Manchin. (He posted his words online, too.)  GBEMS augments STEM curricula with student clubs: computer coding, engineering, robotics; GBO provides educational support. The GBEMS Ham Club was formed for grades 6-8 last year by GBO and Eight Rivers Amateur Radio Club (ERARC). The latter acted as radio mentors for youth activities—antenna building, radio direction-finding, and high-altitude balloon launch and tracking. School staff had added pursuits in communications, wave physics, orbital mechanics, electronics, Doppler, signal processing. Staff highlighted the ISS’s example of international cooperation as a goal. Livestreams of the radio contact were:

• GBO:  Facebook—697 live, 6.5K later, 24K Reaches; YouTube—166 live, 280 later; Zoom live—40 staff.  (YT link is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=aZElXlwzC0c)  
• ARISS: YouTube—22 live, 279 later; ARISS worked on PR with ARRL—Facebook 12,124 Reaches, 233 Responses
• WDTV, Clarksburg news program & online post—1,249 live views.

In addition to ARISS distributing a news release, GBO released theirs to 67 contacts and posted it on the GBO website, resulting in 1,025 visitors that day to their page. WDBJ-TV (Roanoke, VA) ran broadcast and online stories. Other online stories were by Metro News, Pocahontas Times, and Allegheny Mountain Radio. 

May 11: The Collège Descartes in Atony, France hosted an ARISS radio contact; students asked 17 questions of Thomas Pesquet.  Nearly 200 people attended including city officers, regional academy leaders, and reporters from newspapers Le Parisien and City Bulletin and Regional TV France-3. The school created fine video programming for the contact, which began with a real-time tracking map showing the ISS’s position approaching the ARISS ground station location. Next, the program offered a collection of clips of students engaged in STEAM projects and a piece on amateur radio’s role in ARISS. Links for the livestream were sent to all of the region’s colleges. Total views 3 days later were 1,938 on Twitch; the link is (begin at 9 minutes): (493) Space Chat – Collège Descartes, Antony, France – YouTube. ARISS’s You Tube total views 5 days later were 2,057. Students’ physics studies included the solar system, space probes, observing the sky to study relativity of movements, and organization of matter in the universe. The school encourages students to augment science- and math-learning by joining the nature, astronomy, and space clubs, with activities being electronic module-building, communications experiments, computer coding, and Morse code. The school partners with the Radio Club de Clamart.

May 14:  ARISS thanks SCaN for its Facebook post about the Green Bank Elementary Middle School ARISS contact. The post garnered the top SCaN Facebook spot for the week, reaching 804 people.

Upcoming Events

• May 19 Monaro High School, Cooma NSW Australia, ARISS contact, ARISS Japan team
• May 20 Lycée Jean Moulin, Les Andelys France, ARISS contact, ARISS Europe team
• May 22 Education group in Ufa, Russia, ARISS-Russia team
• May 24 Ecole Elémentaire de Saint Leu Centre, France, ARISS contact, ARISS-Europe team

May 5: Classes were outside for the day at the Savannah (GA) River Academy. Students, with help from the National Weather Service and Amateur Radio Club of Columbia County, engaged in hands-on weather balloon launches, part of their lessons related to an autumn ARISS radio contact. The balloons carried a camera and a ham radio Automatic Packet Reporting System unit so students could track the balloons. A fifth grader recited the goals: track, record scientific data, and recover balloons when they pop and fall to earth.  More of the day’s STEM activities included students using ham radios to talk on the air and tapping out words on Morse code keys. ARISS-US Education Committee member Martha Muir and others supported the activities with the big hit being youth experimenting with a two-foot long Morse code key!  The Augusta Chronicle published an item about the outdoor lessons. TV station WRDW ran a story during a two news programs and in an online posting, with a teacher quote being: “The launch definitely caught the interest of many students … they have a passion for weather and space.”  Links are:

https://www.wrdw.com/2021/05/05/columbia-county-students-launch-weather-balloon/

and   

https://www.augustachronicle.com/story/news/education/2021/05/06/columbia-county-radio-club-partners-grovetown-students-launch-weather-balloons-talk-astronauts/4962559001/

May 6: The French publication, REF Magazine, carried an article titled “Discover the IK1SLD Telebridge,” by a French ARISS team member. The write-up contained many photos of the ARISS telebridge ham radio ground station in Casale Monferrato, Italy, including the station room, the radio equipment used for ARISS contacts, and the volunteers who run the operations. The author had driven with his family from France to Italy to visit the station and the trip inspired his daughter to study for and earn her ham radio license.

May 7: The Green Bank (WV) Elementary Middle School ARISS contact was successful. Details will be in next week’s report.

Social Media

Twitter:
As of April 30, 2021, ARISS Twitter followers totaled 14,625, a slight gain over March.

Instagram:
As of April 30, 2021, Instagram followers had a 6% gain over the end of March, and now total 314.

YouTube Members:
As of April 30, YouTube members totaled over 1,320. Four months ago, the total was a little over 800. 

ARISS Web Unique Pageviews:
In April ARISS Web Unique Pageviews totaled 44,749, an increase over March.

Upcoming Events
May 11  College Descartes, Atony France, ARISS contact, ARISS-Europe Team

April 24: ARISS-US Education Committee member Melissa Pore and committee lead Kathy Lamont, along with Ria Jairam, an ARRL Director, presented at a panel session for the ARRL Virginia Convention.  The session title was, “Get Inclusive with Non-traditional Operators.  But How?”.  During the webinar, Lamont and Pore discussed their efforts to inspire youth and educators in radio, space, and wireless technology and described their respective ARISS school contacts.  Jairam focused on women and youth in radio. Attendees totaled 38.

April 26: St Margaret’s School in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia hosted an ARISS contact with Shannon Walker who answered 15 student questions. The faculty had shared related STEM lessons with four other area schools: Brentwood Park Primary School, Beacon Hills College, St Francis Primary School, Berwick Grammar School, and a few students from the first two schools were invited to the ARISS event to ask Walker their questions. With COVID, onsite were 13 students, 13 parents, 4 school staff, and 4 radio amateurs. Another 129 viewed the action via off-site livestream and 21 listened via the ham radio audio service Echolink and Internet Radio Linking Project platforms. An hour prior to the radio contact, those taking part saw and heard STEM-related programming and short talks. These began with the school principal acknowledging the oldest Victoria native peoples, whose current king provided a goodwill message to the students, audience, and ARISS team. The principal shared with listeners that 70% of St Margaret’s girls and boys undertake STEM-related careers. The contact was taped, with 463 people viewing it; the link (begin watching at 1:13:50) is at: https://youtu.be/181z0fW-AsI.    

April 26: Students at the all-girls’ high school, St Scholastica’s College in Glebe Point, New South Wales, Australia held an ARISS contact with Victor Glover. He answered 16 student questions while nearly 100 people, students, educators, and parents, watched. Another 94 viewed the action via off-site livestream and 18 listened via the ham radio audio service Echolink and Internet Radio Linking Project platforms.

April 28: The Blue Mountain Gazette, a newspaper published in Katoomba, New South Wales (NSW), Australia, ran an article covering the ARISS radio contact on April 20^th between Victor Glover and Winmalee (NSW) Public School students. The story described student preparations for the ARISS contact and quoted Principal Kate Ford, “All of our students have been studying a unit on space … with a focus on the International Space Station.” One of Glover’s comments for students that the article featured was: “be resilient life-long learners and good teammates.”

Upcoming Events

• May 7 Green Bank Elementary Middle School, Green Bank WV, ARISS contact, ARISS-US team
• May 11 College Descartes, Atony France, ARISS contact, ARISS-Europe team

April 20: Winmalee Public School in Blue Mountains, New South Wales (NSW), Australia hosted an ARISS radio contact with Victor Glover who answered 18 questions. Students ended the session with a big thank you. The school STEM curriculum includes a weekly STEM Lab for K-6. Space studies covered the solar system, space travel and missions, and exploration. Lessons to prepare for the ARISS contact focused on the ISS: tracking its position in orbit using applied mathematics, building models of the ISS, youth learning about astronauts and their roles, then sharing their ISS knowledge with high school students. The ARISS event brought out a big crowd following area COVID rules—100 students, 200 parents, and the director of Blue Mountains schools. Others were a Blue Mountains City Council member, a popular Sydney TV crew filming the entire event, and a high-rating radio station that later broadcasted its audio recording. The school’s livestream got 300 viewers. The lead ARISS teacher wrote, “Our entire townspeople are now huge fans of Victor Glover. He was so delightful in his manner and responses with the children. Thank you so much to NASA and ARISS. Science Rocks!” The NSW government web site ran a great story at: https://education.nsw.gov.au/news/latest-news/winmalee-students-visit-outer-space. The minister of education stated, ”It’s an incredible opportunity for students to be able to speak with an astronaut and connect what they’re learning to real life events.” A two-minute delightful ABC Facebook post is at:  https://www.facebook.com/9NewsSydney/videos/496447581720667/

April 20:  During the Winmalee ARISS contact described in the previous blurb, a Belgian ARISS team member and colleague were teaching a ham license class for Belgian Army soldiers in two cities. A message said: “We each used the Winmalee students’ ARISS contact / ISS pass to demonstrate amateur radio. We heard 18 questions and answers at both of our sites with only a simple handheld ham radio station—an excellent demo of ham capabilities, antenna polarization, and signal propagation.”

April 21: The ISS National Lab, Lockheed Martin, and the Space Foundation sponsored “Gateway: The Next Giant Leap,” a webinar on inspiring the next generation of world changers. ARISS-US Education Committee member and Space Station Ambassador Melissa Pore presented a talk on how to connect students to the ISS through ARISS programs. The audience, made up of educators participating in Space Foundation and ISS National Lab programs, learned about Gateway as an outpost for Artemis missions to the moon and how to engage students in related learning activities.

April 15: A member of the ARISS-US Education Committee, Diane Warner, who hosted an ARISS school contact in 2019, had presented an ARRL (American Radio Relay League) Learning Network webinar last month at ARRL’s request, on ARISS activities at her school. Now, ARRL has asked her to have the webinar shown, and to support it during a livestream Q&A, at one of its July educator professional development workshops (Teachers Institute—TI. TI offers educators four days of virtual instruction on topics related to wireless technology and amateur radio. Diane will get to attend all four days; she is thrilled! 

April 19:  The ARISS team thanks SCaN for posting on its Twitter and Facebook platforms (53.4k Followers) an ARISS news release about the Winmalee Public School ARISS contact. SCaN’s Twitter post garnered top spot for the week with 7,132 Impressions. NASA STEM retweeted the Twitter post to their 300k followers.

Upcoming Events

• April 21 Space Foundation Gateway Webinar, talk on ARISS for educators,  Melissa Pore
• April 24 ARRL Virginia Convention, panel: ARISS engages Kids/Women in Radio  K.Lamont, M.Pore
• April 26 St. Scholastica’s College, Glebe AU, ARISS contact, ARISS-Japan team
• April 26 St. Margaret’s School, Melbourne AU, ARISS contact, ARISS-Japan team                                                                   

April issue: The Smithsonian magazine ran a feature on how ISS crew members spend their leisure time. The story began with a bit of detail on early space crews’ heavy workloads and needing time off. The writer moved to now, with space crews continuing to be more productive when schedules include relaxing—with making music being quite popular. The story cited the importance of ham radio as an engaging onboard leisure activity, as Doug Wheelock realized during his 2010 ISS mission. Speaking about the myriad of radio signals he heard from Earth’s ham operators, Doug said, “That started a trend for me where I made thousands of contacts across the world. That really became part of my connection back to the planet.”  Referring to deep space missions, he said, ““I can’t imagine doing a long-duration mission without that connection to the planet. It’s a huge psychological hurdle that we’re going to have to figure out.” The article is at: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-do-astronauts-spend-their-weekends-space-180977480/?utm_source=pocket-newtab. A post about the story was added to the ISS Ham Twitter page and to ARISS Facebook and Twitter pages.

April 14:  A team from the ARISS-USA Education Committee is reviewing ARISS Education Proposals that arrived during the opening of the recent window (February 15 to March 31, 2021) to accept such proposals. US education institutions whose proposals rise to the top in this competitive process will be offered the opportunity for ARISS radio contacts to be scheduled for January 1, 2022 to June 30, 2022.

Upcoming Events

• April 20 Winmalee Public School, Blue Mountains NSW Au, ARISS contact, ARISS-Japan team
• April 21 Space Foundation Gateway Webinar, talk on ARISS for educators, Melissa Pore
• April 24 ARRL Virginia Convention, panel: ARISS engages Kids/Women in Radio, K.Lamont, M.Pore
• April 26 St. Scholastica’s College, Glebe AU, ARISS contact, ARISS-Japan team
• April 26 St. Margaret’s School, Melbourne AU, ARISS contact, ARISS-Japan team

March 24-25: Students at the Savannah River Academy (SRA) in Grovetown, GA have been preparing for their upcoming ARISS contact. Members of the Amateur Radio Club of Columbia County (ARCCC) presented a session that gave students a solid understanding of how to operate a handheld radio. They practiced talking to each other using Family Radio Service (FRS) radios and remembered to use phonetics when saying call signs. The kids learned about QSL cards that confirm a radio contact was made between hams; QSLs are commonly traded after radio contacts. The cards were a hit with students getting to design their own personal QSLs.

The next evening at SRA Family Day, ARCCC members set up exhibit tables to engage students, their parents and teachers in ham activities. Demos of amateur satellite communication took place with students recording call signs and grid square coordinates for hams they contacted. They talked over the air with an ARCCC member at home. Kids showed off to parents the things they had learned such as sending Morse code. Several students and adults said they’re interested in getting a ham license.

March 26: The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) offers week-long summer classes to educators; ARISS-US Education Committee member and science teacher Martha Muir attended one. Upon completion, educators become part of the CDC’s Science Ambassador Fellowship (SAF) program and receive the quarterly Science Ambassador Alumni Newsletter. Last quarter’s e-letter carried a notice on watching CDC leaders take part in a NASA-sponsored live chat with Kate Rubins and Shannon Walker. Thinking that some SAF educators might want to host their own ARISS contact for students, Martha penned and submitted a short piece on ARISS and the ARISS proposal process. The editors accepted her item for the Spring 2021 e-newsletter.

April 6: The School of Information Technology & Mathematical Sciences, Southern Hemisphere Space Studies Program 2021 in Mawson Lakes, SA, Australia hosted a successful ARISS radio contact with Shannon Walker for elementary students of Mawson Lakes School.  She answered 22 student questions. People in attendance numbered 45 including the university’s Department of Education Director and Advanced Technology Program Manager. A student exclaimed, “I loved this! One day I will become a scientist and go to space.” Another said, “This made me take a special interest in space and astronomy. I loved the way we were trained and briefed for the event.” The university used its Facebook account to livestream the contact: 767 viewers, 605 engagements. A few days later, another 190 had viewed it. People listening via Echolink totaled 30.

April 5-7: ARISS-Russia hosted three successful ARISS contacts for these schools:

• Nilak Dosaaf Llc in Kaluga
• Kaluga Regional Schools in Kaluga
• Petersburg School in St. Petersburg

On April 5, Nilak Dosaaf Llc high school students enrolled in the educational program called About Gagarin from Space spoke with Sergey Kud-Sverchkov. On April 6, students in the About Gagarin from Space program in Kaluga Regional Schools spoke with Sergey Kud-Sverchkov.  St. Petersburg students in the About Gagarin from Space program talked over the radio on April 7 with Sergey Ryzhikov.

March 31: Three ARISS Italian volunteers presented a live ARISS program for the Associazione Radiotechnica Italiana, Firenze chapter.  The talk was titled “The ISS Seen through ARISS Eyes and Beyond” and 39 people watched, including 2 students and 1 educator. An unknown number of others watched live via the chapter’s Facebook page but within a week, viewers totaled 454; the link is: https://www.facebook.com/IQ5FI. Topics included the antennas to use for ARISS school contacts, the ARISS HamTV system, the ARISS Italian radio telebridge station, and the ARISS Interoperable Radio System.   

Upcoming Events

April 20 Winmalee Public School, Blue Mountains NSW Au, ARISS contact, ARISS-Japan team

March 28-31: In four days’ time, the ARISS-Russia team sponsored ARISS radio contacts at:

• Aznakaevo School, Republic of Tatarstan
• International Aerospace School, Ufa
• Lipetsk Regional Public Organization, Lipetsk
• Amur State University, Blagoveshchensk  

Two of the contacts were tied to the ARISS-Russia educational program called “About Gagarin from Space.” Sergey Kud-Sverchkov supported the first of the four radio contacts with students of the Aznakaevo School. Sergey Ryzhikov handled the second radio contact for students at the International Aerospace School. The third contact, hosted by Ust-Ivanovka Amurskaya school of Amur State University, had Sergey Ryzhikov speaking over the radio with students. Sergey Kud-Sverchkov talked with the Lipetsk Regional Public Organization of Radio Sportsmen.   

March 20:  Two students at Bishop O’Connell High School in Arlington, VA gave a presentation at the school’s amateur radio club meeting to invite more students to become members of the club.  The two students talked about a new AMSAT CubeSat Simulator received by their teacher Melissa Pore, an ARISS-US Education Committee member. The youth explained the CubeSat payload’s new and interesting aspects and how they’ll engage in hands-on activity with it.  Also, Pore’s students were highlighted in the April edition of Virginia Living regarding the TI Codes competition hosted by Texas Instruments and NASA; students designed an astronaut pillow that among other things, had a CO₂ sensor and a micro fan to circulate air near an astronaut’s face.

March 31: An article titled “ARISS, The Most Engaging STEAM Proposal: Amateur Radio Activity from the Space Station” written by ARISS Italia volunteer Micol Ivancic appears in the March 2021 edition of Radio Rivista. This is the official monthly publication of the Associazione Radiotecnica Italiana (ARI), the national amateur radio society in Italy. The three-page article covers ARISS operations and schools’ ARISS STEAM activities.  Italian teachers can request free copies of the magazine for their schools.  

Social Media

Facebook – March 2021

 *Higher Reaches–posts about the result of the EVA to re-install the original ARISS cable and also an upcoming ARISS school contact

 Facebook Impressions for the quarter (January-March) totaled 62,277.

Twitter:

As of March 31, 2021, ARISS Twitter followers totaled 14,530, a slight gain over February.  Impressions for the quarter (January-March) totaled 257,290.

Instagram:

As of March 31, 2021, Instagram followers increased to 297, an increase of over 3% from February.

YouTube Members:

As of March 31, YouTube members totaled over 1,300. In January, the total was a little over 800. 

ARISS Web Unique Pageviews:

In March ARISS Web Unique Pageviews totaled 43,329, an increase of over 3,000 from February.

Upcoming Events

April 6      Sch of Information Tech & Math, Mawson Lakes Au, ARISS contact, ARISS-Japan team

March 17: Goodwood Primary School in Adelaide, South Australia, Australia hosted an ARISS radio contact for students with Shannon Walker who answered 15 of their questions. The audience of 25 followed Adelaide Covid guidelines. Over 184 people watched the livestream and 2,352 more viewed it a few days later.  Channel 7 Adelaide News was on the scene to interview teachers, parents, and students for a story. One young girl (shown in the screenshot below) told the reporter, “This makes me want to learn more about astronauts and science and space stuff.” The story quoted a thrilled parent stating that the contact really brought science home in a practical sense. Teachers made the ARISS contact a focus of key themes: space science and technology—telecommunication equipment on the ISS including ham radio, human habitation in space, and earth and space science including modeling Earth’s solar system and studying oral cultural records, petroglyphs, paintings and stone arrangements of the country’s aboriginal people’s understanding of the night sky and its use for timekeeping.

March 22: Students at Oakwood School in Morgan Hill, CA joined via Zoom in an ARISS contact with Shannon Walker; she answered 23 of their questions. The event was livestreamed; 500 students and teachers watched and within 3 days, over 1,000 more viewed it. The URL is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vg8ni7Gq6Z0.  The school’s STEM curriculum boasts college prep courses for middle and high school students and features robotics and astronomy as extracurricular STEM activities. During the past year, in preparation for the ARISS contact, the school instituted a Year in Space program for all grades. This benefited from volunteers in the space industry and in amateur radio who provided activities in the fields of radio astronomy, amateur radio, computer science, engineering, and robotics.

March 20: The Savannah River Academy in Grovetown, GA was selected to host an ARISS contact in fall 2021. Teachers and students are engaged in STEM activities leading up to the event. The school invited the Amateur Radio Club of Columbia County to plan nine student sessions to introduce them to ham radio and discuss space subjects and how radio and space technology improve our lives. At the first session, students tapped out their names on Morse code keys and made wristlets that spelled their initials in Morse code (school colors—orange for dits, blue for dahs, white in between letters). Next week club members will bring a ham radio station for students to experiment with and learn about radio waves. Next, students will build their radio payload for a weather balloon. ARISS-US Education Committee member Martha Muir helped the school recently to obtain a grant for some of the student materials.

March 20: Educators worldwide participated in the 1st Annual Equinox Balloon Launch using pico transmitters—small, very light-weight radio circuits designed for balloons. The event was led by the founder of the non-profit group SILAS Education (www.silaseducation.org), ARISS Education Committee member Joanne Michael, the CEO of Magnitude.io (another ISS National Lab SSE program like ARISS), and a NASA retired engineer. The balloons sail around the world on the jet stream, transmitting their coordinates via APRS (amateur radio Automatic Packet Reporting System) transmitters and WSPR (Weak Signal Propagation Reporting) transmitters. Michael posted details on the ARISS web site for educators to learn how to fill balloons, the mechanics to predict and track transmitters after launch, and ways to use balloons to stimulate student interest in STEAM. In a Zoom conference for educators, Michael enthusiastically stated, “Teachers love that the launch pulls in so many different disciplines.”  SILAS Education’s leader reported, “There’s at least one kid attached to every launch involved in the journey.” 17 formal and informal educators from five countries—the US, Argentina, Nigeria, Thailand, and Australia—launched balloons at different times of the week depending on weather. TV stations KNDO and KNDU in Yakima and Richmond, WA covered the launch in their online news (also picked up by Fox News/Spokane) with accompanying video; see News | nbcrightnow.com.

March 22: The ARISS contact for the School of Information Technology & Mathematical Sciences in Mawson Lakes, Australia was postponed to April after ISS (false) alarm bells rang.

Upcoming Events

March 28   Republic of Tatarstan students, Russia, ARISS contact, ARISS-Russia team

March 29   International Aerospace School, Ufa Russia, ARISS contact, ARISS-Russia team

March 30   Lipetsk students, Russia, ARISS contact, ARISS-Russia team

March 31   Amur State University, Blagoveshchensk Russia, ARISS contact, ARISS-Russia team