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Document 24
Members:
Roy Neal,
K6DUE, Chair
Rosalie White, K1STO, ARRL rep (also ARISS-Intl Secy/Treasr)
Frank Bauer, KA3HDO, AMSAT rep (also ARISS-Intl Chair)
ARRL Board Liaison:
Joel Harrison, W5ZN
Report: ARISS Activity for January to July 2003
| This report is dedicated to 7 of NASA's finest (including 3 hams) who perished, sadly, in the February shuttle accident. Of this shuttle crew, Kalpana Chawla, KD5ESI, who worked with us in ARISS meetings at Johnson Space Center (JSC); Laurel Clark, KC5ZSU, did 2 terrestrial school QSOs from W5RRR at JSC; and David Brown, KC5ZTC, looked forward to future QSOs. |
On the Air--Education, Field Day QSOs and PR Make Members Happy, Proud
The ARISS Team proudly highlighted the 100th ARISS school QSO on July 19. We were pleased that Ed Lu, KC5WKJ, made Field Day QSOs during several orbital passes. We've continued to support nearly 1 school QSO per week, and it appears Ed is enjoying these. Ed's Expedition 7 crewmate is Yuri Malenchenko, RK3DUP. Ed and Yuri took over in early May for the all-ham crew of Ken Bowersox, KD5JBP; Nikolai Budarin, RV3FB and Don Petit, KD5MDT, who also actively enjoyed making ARISS QSOs.
Every ARISS QSO continues to score media hits for ham radio, and spread goodwill around the globe. Some examples include the Adler Planetarium that posted audio and video to their Web site. The European Space Agency (ESA) created a Web page for details on ARISS and ESA astronaut Pedro Duque, KC5RGG, who flies this fall. ESA set up a contest for all schools in Spain--winning students will speak to Pedro. (URE, Spain's IARU society, helped get ED4ISS for Pedro.) NASA's weekly news digest often reports astronauts' QSOs with schools. Even QSOs that weren't done from space garner media stories -- NASA's Web spotlighted a terrestrial QSO from JSC's W5RRR with astronaut Barb Morgan, KD5VNP, and youth at the Ontario Science Centre resulting in 250 teachers asking for ARISS details.
This spring, NASA Hq paid for expenses for our exhibits at three national teachers conventions -- booth space, registrations, furniture, carpet and electricity; ARISS handouts. ARRL paid for Jerry Hill's travel.
NASA is helping Amateur Radio in two more ways. The leader of their NASA Explorer Schools (50 in the US) wants to integrate ARISS and ham radio into the program. Also, NASA's Aerospace Education Specialists (40 nationwide) who tout ARISS at teacher's conferences were encouraged by NASA to join a ham radio licensing class they hired JSC's Nick Lance, KC5KBO to teach. Rosalie wrote a detailed Web story about this. A related aside-- Nick continues to train US crew members, and Russia trains their crew.
Rosalie assisted LABRE, Brazil's IARU society, in joining ARISS. Brazilians are translating all ARISS materials into Portuguese.
New Hardware -- Kenwood, SSTV, Yaesu
With space shuttles not flying, our launch expectations for hardware can only be guesstimates, but we continue to move ahead. In July, Frank Bauer, ARISS Hardware Chair Lou McFadin, Russian ARISS delegate Sergej Samburov, met in Houston for several days; joining them the next few days were reps from Kenwood and the SSTV project. Kenwood will provide 15 D-700s, half going to Russia. Delivery of the radios was delayed while waiting on Russia to agree to parameters for Kenwood to incorporate in the radios. The work takes about 3 weeks -- examples include lowering power level (for ISS safety reasons) and programming frequencies and band plans. The work is being done right now. Then Russia's Energia will test and ready the radios for flight, taking 3 weeks. We hope to possibly send the D-700 to the ISS in August on a Russian Progress rocket. The team covered many other agenda items in Houston besides equipment issues and working on launch opportunities, including agreements for these now signed by the ARISS chairman, NASA and the Russian ARISS delegate who now hopes to get signatures of the Russian Energia group.
Yaesu is working with the team on which radio can be more easily qualified for space. We hope to launch their radio in 2004. The team is working with NASA and Energia to manifest the SSTV system for November launch; testing will be in Russia. A US/Russian panel is responsible for certification of SSTV software. Lou McFadin built an audio interface box to be tested -- the box allows SpaceCam1 to work with the Ericsson radios on board and transceivers to follow. The hardware team moved forward with power supplies that will allow the 13-volt radios to work with the ISS 28-volt system. The team is working on cables, connectors and RF switches for use with the ISS antennas. Work also proceeds by the Naval Academy on a payload funded by the DoD to test solar cells for one year. Telemetry on their health would be copied on two meters by hams and students.
NASA Heavily Supports ARISS with Dollars
ARISS continues to receive major funding from NASA; we reported in January that in the previous 12 months, we used $112,000 of on-orbit crew time; $150,000 in ISS system-integration staff time; and $140,000 for fabrication, integration and testing of hardware. There are costs for launching hardware and weekly teleconferences (including many overseas hams); salaries of coordinators and schedulers of QSOs; and more. NASA funds are always tight; Rosalie and Frank Bauer composed a spreadsheet and Word files of ARISS stats showing how ARISS meets ISS and NASA education objectives. ARISS touched 15,000 students worldwide, last year.
The SAREX Working Group as the US Part of the Worldwide ARISS Team
In years past, ARISS delegates from Canada, Europe, Japan, Russia and the US agreed to meet twice per year to solve problems and move forward with goals. Because all IARU and AMSAT societies have financial troubles, we agreed to change our meetings to three every two years. We implemented monthly teleconferences.
Summary
ARISS is proud of its many successes and ability to touch youths. Sometimes progress moves at a glacial pace, but the outcome of rewards is worth the troubles. The US ARISS Team continues to take the lead for the ARISS International Team, with Frank as Chairman and Rosalie as Secretary-Treasurer. ARRL and AMSAT-NA continue to offer the largest number of volunteers (most are AMSATers). But the US team continues to ensure equality for hams worldwide interested in ARISS activities. Our US and international teams believe in what we do for youths, Amateur Radio, goodwill and education.
