Category: Weekly Reports

March 27: ARISS put on a strong presence at the 2022 ARRL Virginia State Convention in Annandale, setting up an exhibit table and providing guest speakers for an ARISS forum.   ARISS-USA Director of Education Kathy Lamont and ARISS-US Education Committee member Melissa Pore (the latter via Zoom) took turns giving a 50-minute presentation describing space and radio-related hands-on activities for elementary and high school students. Melissa spoke about her high schoolers’ STEM interests and a satellite she and elementary students at her previous school had built. Kathy explained the role wireless radio can play in elementary education and provided details on a variety of teaching activities that amateur radio operators use to enhance STEAM curriculum at various grade levels. 32 people came to the forum and another 138 tied in via Zoom including VIP ARRL Roanoke Division Director Jim Boehner in North Carolina. Zoom views jumped to 224 within a few days. At the exhibit table, 102 people stopped and learned about ARISS; several were George Mason University students and others were informal educators. Kathy, along with ARISS-USA Executive Director Frank Bauer, Associate Director Marty Schulman, and Janet Bauer staffed the booth. Two VIPs, ARRL Atlantic Division Director Tom Abernethy and ARRL Roanoke Division Vice Director Bill Morine sought out the ARISS table to shower compliments on the ARISS team.  

March 28: The ARISS team began plans for Hamvention, the world’s largest convention for amateur radio operators, which is held near Dayton, Ohio in May.  Hamvention officials honored ARISS, recently selecting the team for one of the coveted forum slots; this is the second year that has happened. Listeners will hear about current and future ARISS projects such as one involving student interaction with telerobotics.  ARISS team members will also set up and staff a booth, inviting wireless and space enthusiasts to learn about ARISS. The team will relate how formal and informal educators can engage in ARISS radio contacts. Passersby will be able to handle tools in the ARISS Radio Kit that can enhance science curriculum. They’ll learn that different versions of the kit are a main aspect of two new ARISS education initiatives.

March 31: The April issue of the QCWA Journal featured a cover story about ARISS penned by Rosalie White.  The Quarter Century Wireless Association, a US and Canadian organization, posts its journal every month. The three and a half page article highlighted the ARISS radio contact last December at the Savannah River Academy (SRA) in Grovetown, GA. The story’s focus covered SRA’s six months of wireless- and space-related hands-on student lessons along with ARISS’s new education initiatives.

ARISS Upcoming Events 

April 6  Leonardo Da Vinci Campus-Nauen, Nauen, Germany ARISS contact, ARISS-Europe team
April 7 Space Hardware Club with area schools, Huntsville AL ARISS contact, ARISS-US team
TBD Axiom Canada & Israel school contacts, ARISS-Canada & ARISS-Europe team

March 21: Toyonaka High School in Osaka, Japan hosted an ARISS contact for students to talk with Kayla Barron; she answered 20 student questions. People social-distanced on site totaled 75, including students, educators, parents, and a visiting professor. The school was named one of Japan’s Super Science High Schools and 30 students belong to the Toyonaka High School Science Club. Several times a year, the high school club members hold scientific labs for elementary school students—this year, the activities related to ARISS. The Kansai ARISS project team assisted the students.  These scientific labs for the younger students will continue through the school year.  SpaceRef.com posted in its March 21^st ISS Status Report a paragraph that ARISS had prepared about the Toyonaka radio contact.

March 17: ARISS learned that ARISS educator Rachel Jones who mentored students at the Savannah River Academy (SRA) in Grovetown, GA, has won a national-level award.  The Radio Club of America (RCA) and the International Wireless Communications Expo selected Rachel as winner of the 2022 Young Professionals Award. It goes to individuals who “work in wireless, are under age 35, and execute some of the industry’s most innovative ideas, showing creativity and influence.”  Rachel developed and executed a year of exciting hands-on lessons tied to wireless for grade 1-8 SRA students as preparation for their December ARISS contact. She got help from her ham club, Amateur Radio Club of Columbia County, to guide all 145 students in transmitter hunting, launching balloons with radio payloads, and operating various types of ham radio equipment. Rachel received her award at the 2022 International Wireless Communications Expo during the Radio Club of America Breakfast.

March 18:  ARISS Chair Frank Bauer and ARISS Director of Engineering Randy Berger prepared charts for a professional development workshop given by Frank at the 2022 5^th Annual HamSCI Workshop. The talk covered recent ARISS research, such as the MarconISSta experiment, along with new ARISS educational programs that focus on research. Most of the 122 audience members were undergraduates and professors. A VIP, Esayas Shume, NASA Science Mission Directorate, Heliophysics Division attended and afterwards, wanted to talk to Frank about similar interests. Several professors and undergrads sought out Frank to discuss how to be involved in ARISS research.  He said, “This conference was a great event for allowing ARISS to network with people interested in research.”  

March 22: An ARISS contact took place for youth in the city of Aznakayevo in the Republic of Tatarstan, Russia. The youth group participates in the About Gagarin From Space program. Anton Shkaplerov supported the ARISS contact.

March 21: A selection of ARISS team members studied a batch of student resumes and gave recommendations to Frank Bauer on NASA interns to consider inviting to work with ARISS. Two ARISS education programs will utilize students to assist with putting into motion the various aspects of the ARISS programs.

March 16: Rosalie White gave a half-hour presentation on the latest ARISS news at the ARRL-ARISS Board Committee meeting. She presented what’s new in regard to hardware plans, operations, recent accomplishments, and education programs.  ARRL (American Radio Relay League), a major sponsor of ARISS, re-named Rosalie as the ARISS Delegate representing ARRL to the ARISS teams for 2022. This was the board committee’s first meeting of the year.

ARISS Upcoming Events 

April 5 Leonardo Da Vinci Campus-Nauen, Nauen, Germany ARISS contact, ARISS-Europe team
April 7 Space Hardware Club with area schools, Huntsville AL ARISS contact, ARISS-US team
TBD Axiom Canada & Israel school contacts, ARISS-Canada & ARISS-Europe team

March 17: Members of the Kids Star Club in Sayama, Japan had a chance to talk with Mark Vande Hei during an ARISS contact; he answered 17 students’ questions. Prior to the contact, elementary school students in the Sayama area had been recruited for their interest in learning about space and earning an amateur radio license. They took part in virtual lessons on space exploration, electricity, radio waves, and operating the club’s amateur radio ground station. The youth who passed their ham radio license exams got to generate the questions that all the students asked during the radio contact. The club livestreamed the action and streamed it also over YouTube with a reported 170 viewers watching. A TV and FM radio station covered the event.

March 11: ARISS technical team volunteer Kerry Banke was chosen to receive the prestigious 2022 Hamvention Special Achievement Award for his outstanding dedication and talents devoted to the Multi-Voltage Power Supply, part of the ARISS InterOperable Radio System (IORS). For several years, he spent hours nearly every day on ARISS’ custom-built power supply (needed because ISS modules don’t operate on the same voltages) that was launched in March 2020 on SpaceX-20. Astronauts utilize the IORS for all Columbus module ARISS radio operations. Banke volunteered for a number of ARISS activities over the years and also as a SAREX Technical Mentor (Shuttle Amateur Radio EXperiment, ARISS’ predecessor) for schools. Award ceremonies will be at the 2022 Hamvention (usually over 30,000 attendees come from around the globe to this convention) held May 20-22 in Xenia, Ohio. Hamvention produced a news video about Banke and his award (730 viewers). The American Radio Relay League posted a story about the award for its web pages and its e-letter, The ARRL Letter, which goes to 107,000 subscribers.

March 16: ARISS educator Micol Ivancic reported that a young lady in the region of Rome, Italy, is earning her engineering degree this week and that two ARISS Italian volunteers assisted her. The young lady did her thesis on analyzing ARISS packet radio transmissions using different types of radio antennas, including a yagi antenna, which she built. Her thesis acknowledged Micol and Fabrizio Fava for their guidance, but Micol says she was the one who was honored to assist.

February 20: The ARISS SSTV (Slow Scan TV) Team made up of 10 volunteers performed an experiment in an effort to expand ARISS capabilities by testing a variety of different SSTV modes to download images downlinked from the ISS. The team utilized ARISS-Europe approved ground stations, and then downloaded 32 images. This first in a series of SSTV experiments to be carried out using the ARISS InterOperable Radio System in the Columbus module, this test used voice repeater mode. Images were downlinked while the ISS was over Europe, Australia, and Indonesia. All interested ham operators and other radio enthusiasts in the ISS footprint during the transmissions were encouraged to try receiving and decoding the special downlinked signals and email reports to ARISS. Over 570 participants, some in Hawaii and North American, sent reports! Each person received an acknowledgement message with a thank you.

March 18: ARISS Mentor Gordon Scannell learned that Snow Elementary School teachers in Dearborn, MI, wanted recommendations for cool books to read to students during Reading Month. Gordon, one of the school district’s IT staff members, shared the URL for Story Time from Space, including Emily Calandrelli’s “Ada Lace, Take Me to Your Leader” with its ties to ARISS, read by Anne McClain. When he saw one of the teachers a few days later she reported that her 20 students enjoyed Story Time from Space. She added that some of the girls in her class were very excited to learn that girls can be astronauts, too!  She said: “Apparently I have some girls interested in becoming astronauts when they get older!”

March 21: The Toyonaka High School ARISS contact was successful and more details will be available for next week’s report.

ARISS Upcoming Events 

March 22  Aznakayevo city youth, Republic of Tatarstan, Russia ARISS contact, ARISS Russia team

TBD for April  Axiom Canada & Israel school contacts, ARISS-Canada & ARISS-Europe teams

March 1: University of Maryland’s Global Campus (UMGC) website featured a story posted on the Cybersecurity blog about Rachel Jones, an ARISS informal educator who led STEM lessons at an ARISS school. She always wanted a space career, had NASA internships, and earned a Master’s in Space Studies at International Space University in Strasbourg, France where she discovered she loved cybersecurity. Back in the US, she earned a Master’s in Intelligence and this spring, will finish a UMGC Bachelor’s in Cybersecurity. Leading young students in ARISS hands-on lessons made her recognize the importance of exposing kids to science at an early age. Rachel said, “I really didn’t have the mentorship to recognize what I wanted to do early in life, so I want to make sure I provide that to others.” The engaging story is at:
https://globalmedia.umgc.edu/2022/02/28/degree-in-cybersecurity-opens-a-door-to-space-exploration-for-rachel-jones/

March 3: ARISS-US Director of Education Kathy Lamont coordinated with two ARISS team members and held an ARISS Proposal Webinar. This was for educational institutions wanting to learn how to be selected for an ARISS contact, including tasks such as preparing STEAM classroom lessons. Attendees learned about the ARISS Education and Contact Proposal they would prepare and how to navigate the submission process. Attendees numbered 25.

March 1: An ARISS February weekly report featured five-year-old Mario Vasquez and his father in Spain who shared the excitement of receiving ARISS SSTV images during the ARISS December session. Mario loved it, and ARISS educator Micol Ivancic found out about his reactions. She decided to mail him a special gift of decals and patches tied to ARISS and space. He was elated, sent her his photo, and anxiously awaits the next ARISS SSTV event.

March 6: Two years ago, SpaceX-20 launched to the ISS with the ARISS InterOperable Radio System (IORS) in its protective pouch. Today the IORS continues to work flawlessly and is a staple of ARISS operations in Columbus. ARISS’ power supply guru Kerry Banke reported the IORS has been on the ISS for over 17,500 hours and has traveled about 306 million miles!  Frank Bauer congratulated the ARISS team who contributed to the development and flight certification of the IORS.

March 5: ARISS Director of Engineering Randy Berger set up a booth area representing ARISS at the Irving Hamfest, the second largest regional amateur radio get-together in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. He displayed ARISS hardware and information on ARISS education programs and school radio contacts. He talked with over 60 hams who had questions. He reported, “Most said they were going to listen to other hams engaging with the onboard ARISS radio system. Three want to help with ARISS school contacts and two want to help schools with preparing an ARISS Education and Contact Proposal to submit.” 

ARISS Upcoming Events 

March 17 Kids Star Club Sayama, Sayama, Japan ARISS contact, ARISS-Japan Team
March 18 HamSCI Workshop, Huntsville AL, presentation on ARISS experiments, ARISS-US Team
March 21 Toyonaka High School, Toyonaka, Japan ARISS contact, ARISS-Japan Team
TBD for April: Axiom crew school contacts in Canada and Israel                       

                    

February 28: Carter G. Woodson Middle School hosted an ARISS radio contact with Thomas Marshburn; he answered 20 student questions. An audience of 16 educators, 58 students, and 15 guests listened. The school is named for Carter Woodson, a son of former slaves; he became the second African-American to earn a doctorate from Harvard. Founder of the association for the Study of Negro Life and History, he is considered the father of Black History Month. The ARISS contact live stream (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmFtTluF3aQ) was on YouTube, and also posted is a school video of student STEM activities; the two garnered 390 views. An online newsfeed, the Progress-Index featured an article about the contact. NBC-12 reporters came to school the next day to interview students for a special show. The school’s STEM curriculum included courses in space exploration and related technology, the Solar System, and careers tied to the study and exploration of space. The faculty partnered with members of the Richmond Amateur Radio Club who provided instruction on how radios work, hands-on kit-building and electronics, and amateur radio communications.

February 4-25: With their ARISS contact scheduled for April, the Space Hardware Club of the University of Alabama (UAH) in Huntsville recently visited several area schools whose students will be part of the contact. As prep for this, the undergrads visited the schools, leading lessons in space-related projects. They spent a day with 100 students at New Hope Elementary School in New Hope, building and flying paper rockets and then manipulating string to learn how radio waves work. Undergrads returned to the school to teach kids with a critical thinking game involving balloon payloads. At Mountain Gap Middle School in Huntsville, 120 students gathered with UAH club members to make and race paper airplanes and then joined together for a session with the critical thinking game on balloon payloads.

February 8: The Liborius Gymnasium in Dessau-Roßlau, Germany hosted a 2018 ARISS contact and students are continuing to study STEM tied to space and wireless radio. Twelfth graders love their physics class and built a ham radio station to engage with the QO-100 geostationary satellite. Recently, 35 twelfth graders planned an exposé for 45 tenth graders and staff. The capstone was a one-hour Q&A ham radio contact via QO-100 with four Antarctica Neumayer Station scientists. One was Theresa Thoma, a ham operator with computer science and electrical engineering degrees. Katherine, a Liborius student who has her ham license, used the school ham radio set-up to initiate the call while students listened anxiously, hoping the contact would work. Theresa answered from Neumayer’s radio room—students “broke out in frenetic applause.” She and the three other scientists answered questions about life at Neumayer, their research and technology, the ham station, and Antarctic effects on radio propagation. Afterwards, Liborius students said Theresa was a good role model for them. Next, Liborius students used a globe, satellite model, and string to present radio wave theory to non-hams. They used props to explain frequency and amplitude of an electromagnetic oscillation, and described the math and physics in “an engaging way.” Media reps came from radio stations MDR, SAW, Corax, Mitteldeutsche Zeitung newspaper, and MDR TV; the latter showed a three-minute video on the evening news titled, “Sparks—a hobby that broadens horizons.”

March 3: The ARISS team wrote and distributed a news release on working with Axiom Space. Two crew members scheduled to fly on Axiom Mission-1 (Ax-1) will use the ARISS radio to conduct school radio contacts. Ax-1 crew members Mark Pathy from Canada and Eytan Stibbe from Israel will support the contacts.  ARISS trained them on using the ARISS radio system and guided them on studying to earn their ham radio licenses. Stibbe will talk with middle and high school students in Israel. 40 school classes are expected to take part in his “Rakia” mission with theoretical and practical sessions on radio-based communication. Pathy’s personal mission theme of “Caring for people and the planet” will benefit Canadian elementary and high schools with STEM content and mentorship. Students developed questions on how human bodies react to being in space, doing things in zero gravity, and the state of our planet.

February: ARISS teacher Melissa Pore has been sharing with Bishop O’Connell High School students in Arlington, VA the many new STEM education activities she learned at the Space Exploration Educators Conference in Houston, TX. Her engineering students and amateur radio club members are enjoying space and communications activities tied to their 2022 Global Studies Program, “Space Exploration, Engineering & International Cooperation,” with ARISS as the role model.

ARISS Social Media for February 2022

ARISS Facebook – February

Twitter: On February 28, 2022, ARISS Twitter followers totaled 16,227, a gain of 1.2% over January.

Facebook: Followers for February 2022 increased to 7,305.

Instagram: Followers at the end of February 2022 grew to 404.

ARISS YouTube: At the end of February, subscribers increased to 1.64k.

February: Top Tweet—12.9k Impressions       Top Facebook Post—3,566 Reaches

                                       119 Engagements       

ARISS Upcoming Events 

March 18 HamSCI Workshop, Huntsville AL, presentation on ARISS experiments, ARISS-US Team

February 23:  Students sporting ARISS t-shirts at Sussex County Charter School for Technology in Sparta, NJ were anxious hearing a countdown to calling Mark Vande Hei on the radio. Hearing his voice, they cheered loudly and during the ARISS contact he answered 14 questions.  765 people watched at the school or via the live stream, and 24 hours later, the recording got 1,190 views. VIPs attending were Acting New Jersey Department of Education Commissioner Angelica Allen-McMillan, State Legislature Chief of Staff Brett Conrads, Sussex County Education Superintendent Gayle Carrick, and ARRL Directors Fred Kemmerer and Ria Jairam (assisting with the radios).  Ham operators in the ISS footprint listened on their radios at home. A New Jersey Education Association crew taped the action and interviewed staff and students for a future feature, “Making the Grade.” Faculty had led students in hands-on physics activities on space weather, communications, solar cycles, ionospheric phenomena and effects on communication. Partnering on lessons were New Jersey Institute of Technology, Sussex County Technical School, and Sussex County Amateur Radio Club. Last June the school sponsored the first Radio STEM Camp and formed the Sussex County Charter School for Technology Amateur Radio Club (12 members) that works with the Society of Women Engineers. On Friday, ARISS posted a YouTube about Sussex’s ARISS STEM activities at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHlexJ-VZeU.

February 22: German students from Erasmus Gymnasium in Denzlingen and from Goethe Gymnasium in Freiburg held a successful ARISS contact with Matthias Maurer who answered 19 questions. The live stream garnered 230 views, and three days later 2,683 viewers had tuned in. The contact was streamed also over the QO-100 geostationary ham radio satellite. The schools hosted a multi-faceted several-hour event that showcased student STEAM activities, Maurer’s background, the schools’ and regions’ histories, area ham clubs’ support, and greetings from officials. A video presented Erasmus Gymnasium’s student studies on applied science and technology and Goethe Gymnasium’s physics courses covering electromagnetic waves, tech applications, math tools and other STEM activities. Media coverage included radio stations Radio Regenbogen, Baden.FM, Hitradio Ohr, Schwarzwaldradio and newspapers Badische Zeitung and Von Haus zu Haus.

February 10-12: ARISS-US Education Committee member Martha Muir, with several North Fulton Amateur Radio League members and an informal educator (who had led STEM lessons at an ARISS school) teamed up for an ARISS presence at the 2022 Georgia Science Teachers Association Conference. Educators came to Peachtree City from all over the state. The team staffed a table in the exhibit hall and set up a ham satellite station in the parking lot. In three days, they interacted with 300 teachers. Those stopping at the table were nudged to head outside to watch and take part in making satellite radio contacts. An educator who brought two elementary-age daughters saw her girls’ fascination with the moving ISS on the Geochron atlas and being thrilled when they made a satellite radio contact. Martha had been chosen to give a Thursday talk and Q&A; she described ARISS to a roomful of 27 teachers. Rachel was chosen for a Friday session; she spoke to 25 teachers on launching and garnering data from ham radio payloads on high-altitude balloons, lessons she had taught at an ARISS school. Martha also visited booths set up by teacher education colleges and science museums, generating interest in the upcoming ARISS proposal window opening.

February 17:  The lead ARISS teacher at St Stephen’s Episcopal School in Houston, TX has a mast and an azimuth/elevation antenna rotator set up in the school’s lab for students to work with. The school will host an ARISS contact later in 2022. The teacher wrote: “The kids are really excited when they watch the antenna rotating. This week they used it to light up an LED with a Romex dipole antenna. They’re into it!”  

February 17: ARISS Education Director Kathy Lamont wrote a blurb for NASA EXPRESS to announce a window opening by ARISS for educators to write and submit an ARISS-US Education and Contact Proposal. NASA EXPRESS went to 56,496 subscribers and was shared through the NASA Office of STEM Engagement’s social media tools to approximately 937,950 followers (NASA STEM Engagement Facebook, @NASASTEM Twitter, 429,847 NASA STEM Pinterest). 
The ISS National Lab distributed a message on February 21 about the ARISS window opening to 1,500 people in the Space Station Explorers Ambassador program.

ARISS Upcoming Events 

February 28 Carter Woodson Middle School, Hopewell VA  ARISS contact, ARISS-US Team

February 14: FH Aachen, University of Applied Sciences in Aachen (FHAUAS) Germany hosted an ARISS contact with Matthias Maurer (who earned his doctorate there); he answered 19 questions. The livestream of the contact garnered 512 views and the recording saw 2,008 views four days later. Many European hams listened to the contact using their own hand-held radios. Engineering students organized the ARISS project with help from these FHAUAS partners: Yuri´s Night Deutschland e.V., Deutscher Amateur Radio Club e.V., and Deutsches Zentrum für Luft-und Raumfahrt (DLR). Undergrads had set up a competition for the region’s young students to submit questions; the youth whose questions were selected felt quite honored to speak to Maurer.  FHAUAS offers a bachelor’s and master’s education in computer engineering, civil engineering, aerospace engineering, electrical engineering, bioengineering, power engineering. The school’s permanent Space Operations Facility helps students learn fundamentals of satellite communications by operating an amateur radio station including a radio ground station and mission control center—mostly built and programmed by students. They capture and decode data from weather satellites and ham satellites such as CubeSats.

February 10: Students at Gewerbliche Schulen Donaueschingen in Donaueschingen, Germany had an ARISS contact with Matthias Maurer who answered 18 questions. Following Covid protocols, 18 students and 8 staff and radio volunteers were on site. Other students watched the livestream, and over 440 listened to the audio at several area schools. Media coverage was by Südkurier, SWR Radio, SWR Aktuell TV, Radio 7 and KMZ-Stream. The school provides its 1,200 students a two-year STEM vocational training program, including in technology, the natural sciences, and an introduction to mechanical and electrical engineering. The senior class took on the ARISS contact as their final graduating project with support from the staff and the area amateur radio club that many students belong to and are licensed hams. Preparation for the ARISS contact included communications studies on radio wave properties and electrical engineering, such as radio components for filtering, and antenna construction projects. 

February 11-13: ARISS supported a full set of activities in Florida at one of the largest annual US ham radio conventions, Orlando HamCation, with an estimated 25,000 attendees. ARISS set up an exhibit in two booths that showcased three new education programs; ARISS volunteers talked with approximately 400 radio enthusiasts, educators, and students. Frank Bauer took part in an interview video initiated by ARISS-sponsor ARRL; he spoke about new ARISS educational programs; viewer count a week later totaled 4,630.  Four ARISS team members presented a forum featuring a panel discussion on the new ARISS education programs and new equipment initiatives; panel members answered questions from an audience of 35. Another ARISS team member presented a forum on ham radio satellites and ARISS activities.

February 7-8: Cosmonauts on the ISS supported another popular Moscow Aviation Institute SSTV session. This event attracted 545 unique participants who downloaded and posted 1,560 images to the ARISS SSTV Gallery at: https://www.spaceflightsoftware.com/ARISS_SSTV/index.php.

January: ARISS educator Gina Kwid, a K-5 engineering teacher at Galileo STEM Academy in Eagle, ID, led several hands-on STEM activities recently that students particularly enjoyed. They learned about flying a drone and its use of radio communication, added a motor to Legos projects, and created cardboard models of Mars landers.

January 10-14: ARISS educator Melissa Pore attended the week-long Vatican Observatory‘s science workshop, “Astronomy for Catholic Ministry & Education” in Tucson, AZ. She had the opportunity to hold discussions about ARISS and how she uses amateur radio and ARISS in her high school classes to teach radio waves, frequency, and various aspects of wireless communications.

February 20: ARISS is performing the first of its series of official experiments from the Columbus Module with the hope of expanding its ARISS SSTV (picture downlink) capabilities. The ARISS-Europe and ARISS-US teams are running the special SSTV experiments using a new digital coding scheme. The first experiment will utilize ARISS-Europe approved ground stations to transmit digital SSTV signals. Members of the ham radio community, young and old, students and the public who are in the ISS footprint are invited to receive and decode these special signals, and email reports to ARISS.

February 17:  A Russian Progress re-supply ship delivered an additional Kenwood D710GA ARISS radio to the ISS, this one for the Service Module. The radio will allow ARISS to broaden its activities and will aid ARISS by having identical radios in both the Service Module and Columbus Module.

ARISS Upcoming Events 

February 22 Erasmus Gymnasium, Denzligen, Germany ARISS contact, ARISS-Europe Team
February 23 Sussex County Charter School for Technology, Sparta NJ ARISS contact, ARISS-US Team
February 28 Carter Woodson Middle School, Hopewell VA  ARISS contact, ARISS-US Team

February 4: Johannes Kepler Gymnasium (JKG) in Lebach, Germany hosted an ARISS radio contact with Matthias Maurer who answered 16 student questions. This K-12 school is one of only three in the Lebach area with a STEM department and partners with the global Bosch Homburg, Environmental Campus Birkenfeld, and Krämer-IT. JKG’s amateur radio station offers the students enjoyable learning activities on radio communications; teachers lead projects such as launching model rockets and high-altitude balloons with radio payloads that allow tracking and analyzing of the data.  The livestream of the ARISS contact events garnered 2,994 views, and 6 days later, 4,646 views; the URL is https://youtu.be/S15MUGSvlQI (begin at 41 minutes).

February 2: Last week’s report listed a successful ARISS contact at the Amur Flight Control Center of Amur State University (AmSU) in Blagoveshchensk, Russia. ARISS has now received photos and details, including that 12 students came from several area schools to ask their questions during the radio contact. Supporting the contact were two cosmonauts, Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov; they answered 14 questions. Chief Specialist of RSC Energia, Sergey Samburov spoke to the students as did the senior lecturer of the AmSU Department of Physics. Also invited was the AmSU Deputy Dean for Career Guidance; she described STEM careers, encouraging students to consider these.

February 2: Last week’s report covered ARISS leaders attending the ISS National Lab Space Station Explorers’ (SSE) annual partner meeting at Space Center Houston (TX). ARISS now has details on the activity of ARISS educators Melissa Pore and Gina Kwid at the meeting. Melissa spoke during the ISS National Lab User Advisory Group’s presentation, showing a video and describing ARISS, including how ARISS and SSE lessons are an integral part of the resources for her high school’s STEM classes. Gina gave her perspective on her students’ STEAM experiences from the months of ARISS-related studies prior to her school hosting an ARISS contact.

February 4: Frank Bauer and Rosalie White tag-teamed for a multi-media presentation to members of the Dayton (OH) Amateur Radio Association. Attendees totaled 78 from Ohio; 3 were in other states. The hour-long talk covered all aspects of ARISS, including new education initiatives. Questions at the end showed the audience’s interest in helping youth take part in upcoming education programs. The club posted a recording of the talk on their web site for members who couldn’t watch due to shoveling snow.

ARISS Upcoming Events
February 11-13 ARRL National Convention, Orlando FL, ARISS booth & forum, ARISS-US Team
February 14 University of Applied Sciences, Aachen, Germany, ARISS contact,ARISS-Europe Team

January 31:  The Lewis Center for Educational Research in Apple Valley, CA hosted an ARISS contact supported by Tom Marshburn for their students in 116 classes at the Academy of Academic Excellence and the Norton Science and Language Academy. They asked him 13 questions, some in English and some in Spanish. They followed Covid guidelines and the audience mix was: 176 educators and staff, 2,652 students, and 3,321 parents, community members and other space enthusiasts. The Center showed a video of students’ STEAM learning activities; after the ARISS contact a student question session was supported by astronaut Dan Tani.  Lewis offered a Facebook livestream of events at https://youtu.be/zvkNhysV-YI and ARISS simulcasted it on the ARISS YouTube Channel. In addition to Social Media postings done by Lewis and picked up by other venues, the High Desert Daily News prepared and ran a story:  https://www.hddailynews.com/news/local/aae-makes-long-distance-phone-call-to-international-space-station/article_86dd10ee-82ea-11ec-972c-23cfe9868feb.html.  Lewis staff began leading student STEAM activities in the 2021 Fall semester. Throughout January they taught some of the Christa McAuliffe Lost Lessons completed by Ricky Arnold and “What is a Satellite”–natural and human-made, i.e. ISS, and what each satellite is. Other lessons were “What is NASA SCaN,” how they communicate, the electromagnetic spectrum and its parts used to communicate. ARISS team members Christy and Bruce Hunter led some communications demos and activities with students. Lewis operates the Goldstone Apple Valley Radio Telescope astronomy program through a 25-year partnership with NASA/JPL.

February 2: ARISS was represented at the Space Exploration Educators Conference in Houston, TX. As part of the first day of the conference, the ISS National Lab held its hybrid-style annual Space Station Explorers’ Partners Meeting. ARISS team members Frank Bauer, Melissa Pore, Gina Kwid, and Rosalie White participated. At this meeting, NASA Office of STEM Engagement’s Mike Kincaid gave a lengthy talk. At the SEEC event, ARISS educators Melissa Pore gave a presentation related to ARISS and more details will be in next week’s report.

January 25 & February 2: In late January the Quantorium Children’s Technopark in Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Russia, hosted a successful ARISS radio contact supported by Anton Shkaplerov. Then on February 2, Amur State University students took part in an ARISS radio contact with Pyotr Dubrov. Both groups of students are in the Gagarin from Space program.    

January 28: ARISS thanks SCaN for creating Twitter and Facebook posts about the ARISS contact at Lewis Center for Educational Research in California.

January 15: ARISS team member Randy Berger presented two ARISS forums at the Cowtown Hamfest in Forest Hill, TX. Between the two forums, attendees totaled 30. Randy had set up an ARISS exhibit area at a table and an estimated 80 people stopped by and asked questions about ARISS.

ARISS Social Media for January

ARISS Facebook

January ARISS Facebook followers totaled 7,249.
January ARISS Twitter followers were 15,866, a 1% gain over December. 
January Instagram followers grew to 393.  
January YouTube subscribers totaled 1,661, a 1% gain over December.    

Top Tweet in January – 4,162 Impressions

ARISS Upcoming Events 

February 4 Johannes-Kepler Gymnasium, Lebach, Germany, ARISS contact, ARISS-Europe Team
February 10 Gewerbliche Schulen, Donaueschingen, Germany, ARISS contact, ARISS Europe Team
February 11-13 ARRL National Convention, Orlando FL, exhibit & forum,  ARISS-US Team
February 14 University of Applied Sciences, Aachen, Germany, ARISS contact, ARISS-Europe Team

September-January: The Lewis Center for Educational Research in Apple Valley, CA has been sponsoring months of student STEM activities leading up to their ARISS radio contact on January 31. (All the results of their ARISS contact will be in next week’s report.)  Lewis Center educators developed 30-minute weekly lessons to engage K-5 students in all classes at the Academy for Academic Excellence and the Norton Science & Language Academy. Youth enjoyed many hands-on activities; two were Kennedy Space Center lessons, “Rocket Fuel Scientific Process,” testing various chemical reactions for launching rockets; and “Heat Shield Engineering,” students designing heat shields to protect their “choconaut,” and testing those with a hair dryer. Also, students simulated working in space gloves during an EVA by wearing puffy winter gloves while manipulating floral wire, nails, and screws on foam pieces. They will do NASA SCaN’s Whisper in Space and Line of Sight activities, and learn about ARISS communications. Area ARISS team members provided students with ham radio demos, presentations, and activities.

January 25: The Space Hardware Club (SHC) members at University of Huntsville, AL will host an ARISS contact for area middle schools; young students will be directly involved in the radio contact. In preparation, the undergrads led STEM-based activities at the middle schools. In an October weekly report, SHC members were highlighted for teaching basic rocketry to Buckhorn Middle School students in New Market who then built and launched their own model rockets. In November the undergrads helped Sparkman Middle School students in Toney to launch a high altitude balloon with a ham radio payload for tracking and analyzing the data. Now in January, these youngsters and undergrads are all looking forward to more activities and their mid-April ARISS contact.

December 31: ARISS is seeing more educators and youth take part in ARISS Slow Scan (SSTV) events. The December 2021 session caught the interest of five-year-old Mario Vazquez in Spain while he sat with his father at their home ham station.  Mario’s excitement piqued watching an ARISS transmission slowly form into an image on the computer screen. Afterwards, the two sent their download to the online ARISS SSTV Gallery, which qualified them to receive a diploma from the ARISS team in Poland. The father wrote, “Mario is five and wants to be an astronaut. The activity and the diploma have been a boost! He has been talking about ARISS all month at school … we cannot wait for the next ARISS SSTV transmissions. Meantime we are playing with NOAA and Meteor M2 satellites.”

ARISS awarded 3,911 SSTV diplomas to December participants requesting them. A podcast host who offered a set of December YouTube tutorials on the ARISS SSTV event garnered 44k viewers. Comments that a few left include: “I want to get my grandkids involved in this.”  “You’ve motivated me to try it!”  “My antenna is only 10’ off the ground and the ISS wasn’t even directly overhead–it was on the outer edge, and I still downloaded a good image.”

January 17: ARISS garnered a media hit in Dakota State University’s (DSU) “News 2022.” The online story, titled “Inspiring Students through Volunteer Work,” described an ARISS volunteer mentoring Savannah River Academy students throughout many months of 2021 on STEM lessons prior to their ARISS radio contact. The ARISS volunteer is a DSU cybersecurity doctoral student. The article quotes a Savannah River Academy’s science teacher noting that as young students gained more knowledge about space, their questions got more technical. She said: “I could really see the progression.” The URL is: https://dsu.edu/news/2022/01/inspiring-students.html?fbclid=IwAR3GPk4lMA5VDwH56oxn5_DAoMJdz8P9VYKLsVIwRTKPz8oFaJLPd0T2mvM

January 20:  Regarding another media hit, readers may recognize the photo in the screenshot. The photo was in a late November 2021 ARISS weekly report on Tecumseh (OK) students designing, developing and building a light-box project that lit up the ISS’ path across the Midwest during their ARISS contact. SCaN asked ARISS to ensure the high school knew about SIP interns. Several weeks later, the Countywide & Sun, an online Tecumseh news outlet featured a story on how NASA enjoyed learning about the light-box project. (Only subscribers can read the full story.)

ARISS Social Media

Top Tweet in January – 4,162 Impressions

ARISS Upcoming Events   

February 2 Amur State University, Blagoveshchensk Russia, ARISS contact, ARISS-Russia Team
February 3-5 Space Exploration Educators Conference, ARISS Forum, ARISS-US Team
February 4 Johannes-Kepler Gymnasium, Lebach, Germany, ARISS contact, ARISS-Europe Team
February 11-13 ARRL National Convention, Orlando FL, exhibit & forum, ARISS-US Team