Tag Archives: ARISS

Oct 31 2015

Radio amateurs to help London children talk to ISS

International Space Station - Image Credit NASA

International Space Station – Image Credit NASA

On Wednesday, November 4 pupils at the Eleanor Palmer Primary School in Camden, London should have the opportunity to speak to an astronaut in space thanks to an Amateur Radio Telebridge link via Australia. The audio will be streamed via the web and Echolink.

ARISS LogoAn International Space Station school contact has been planned with participants at Eleanor Palmer School, London, United Kingdom on Wednesday, November 4. The event is scheduled to begin at approximately 09:51 GMT. It is recommended that you start listening approximately 10 minutes before this time. The duration of the contact is approximately 9 minutes and 30 seconds.

The contact will be a telebridge between astronaut Kjell Lindgren KO5MOS, using the callsign NA1SS from the amateur radio station in the ISS Columbus module, and Martin Diggens VK6MJ in Western Australia. The contact should be audible over portions of Australia and adjacent areas.  Interested participants are invited to listen in on the 145.800 MHz FM downlink.

Audio from this contact will be available via the amateur radio Echolink system on node *AMSAT* (101377) and via the IRLP Node 9010 Discovery Reflector.

Streaming Audio will be able on the web at https://sites.google.com/site/arissaudio/

Audio on Echolink and web stream is generally started around 20 minutes prior to the contact taking place so that you can hear some of the preparation that occurs. IRLP will begin just prior to the ground station call to the
ISS.

Contact times are approximate. If the ISS executes a reboost or other manoeuvre, the AOS (Acquisition Of Signal) time may alter by a few minutes

Eleanor Palmer Primary School, a non-selective community school, is located in central London in the United Kingdom. London is an exciting and dynamic capital city and its schools are the best in the country, attributed to the social and ethnic diversity, excellent local leadership and the quality of teaching.

Eleanor Palmer is a relatively small school of around 220 pupils with single classes of 30 children per year. The youngest pupils are 3 years old and the oldest 11 years old. Due to the central London location it is a highly diverse and inclusive school with staff and children from many different backgrounds.

The pupils achieve highly as judged by national benchmarks. One of the core aims of the school is to inspire in all pupils a love of learning and the desire to continue to learn and they therefore seek to provide a rich and broad curriculum opening minds and creating opportunities. The school hope that their contact with the ISS will inspire pupils to go on to learn more about space through the study of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.

Participants will ask as many of the following questions as time allows:

1.  What have you seen that is more beautiful than earth?

2.  Who or what inspired you to choose this job?

3.  Does being in space make you feel differently about earth?

4.  What can you learn from the ISS that you cannot learn on earth?

5.  Will normal people who are not astronauts be able to visit space in the ISS one day?

6.  How do you sleep?

7.  Is it quiet up there in the ISS?

8.  When you get back to earth, do you have to re-train your muscles?

9.  Can you call home?

10.  Do you all have to be scientists?

11.  What do you think is the most important things children should know about space?

12.  What time zone do you use?

13.  Do you have plants on the ISS?

14.  What has been your favourite experiment?

15.  How does your brain respond to micro gravity?

16.  How do you wash your clothes?

17.  If you cry in space, with laughter, what happens to your tears?

18.  What do you want to do when you come back to earth?

19.  How do you get enough oxygen?

20.  Is it more scary taking off from earth or returning to earth?

21.  What is your energy source on the ISS?

22.  What does it feel like to be in space?

23.  Is it always dark in space?

Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) lets students worldwide experience the excitement of talking directly with crew members of the International Space Station, inspiring them to pursue interests in careers in science, technology, engineering and math, and engaging them with radio science technology through amateur radio. http://www.ariss-eu.org/

A telebridge contact is where a dedicated ARISS amateur radio ground station, located somewhere in the world, establishes the radio link with the ISS. Voice communications between the students and the astronauts are then patched over regular telephone lines.
http://www.ariss-eu.org/ARISS%20Telebridge%20Guidelines.doc

What is Amateur Radio ? http://www.essexham.co.uk/what-is-amateur-radio

Eleanor Palmer Primary School
http://www.eleanorpalmer.camden.sch.uk/news/countdown-to-iss-link-up/
Twitter @eleanorpalmersc

Oct 30 2015

Tim Peake KG5BVI and the ISS Astro Pi’s

Competition winner Hannah Belshaw with the Astro Pi flight unit. Hannah’s entry logs data from the Astro Pi sensors, and visualises it later using structures in a Minecraft world.

Competition winner Hannah Belshaw with the Astro Pi flight unit.
Hannah’s entry logs data from the Astro Pi sensors, and visualises it later using structures in a Minecraft world.

AMSAT-UK members are leading on the Amateur Radio on the ISS (ARISS) Schools contacts programme for the upcoming Tim Peake Principia mission to the ISS. A number of high profile school contacts are planned to be carried out and this activity is being coordinated with the UK Space Agency as part of the overall Principia Educational Outreach programme.

Two specially augmented Raspberry Pi’s called Astro Pi‘s are planned to fly on an Orbital Sciences’ Cygnus cargo freighter to the ISS in early December. They will be used by UK astronaut Tim Peake KG5BVI during his Principia mission on the Space Station which is expected to commence in mid-December.

The Astro Pi’s are planned to run experimental Python programs written by young people in schools across the country; the results will be returned back to Earth at the end of the mission. ARISS/AMSAT-UK members are actively involved in discussions with the UK Space Agency, ESA, the Raspberry Pi Foundation and others to establish the feasibility of re-purposing one of the Astro Pi units, either within or post Tim Peake’s mission, to provide an alternative video source for the amateur radio HamTV transmitter in the ISS Columbus module. Additional discussions are ongoing with all parties for joint educational activities into the future with the Astro Pi units being networked and potentially enhancing the capability of the amateur radio station on board Columbus.

The main mission of HamTV is to perform contacts between the astronauts on the ISS and school students, not only by voice as now, but also by unidirectional video from the ISS to the ground. ARISS has been working with Goonhilly and hope to provide a video download facility via one of their large dishes for the schools contacts as well as attempting to receive the video at each school as part of the contact.

Principia mission http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Human_Spaceflight/Principia

School Shortlist for Tim Peake Space Station Contact
https://amsat-uk.org/2015/07/14/school-shortlist-tim-peake-iss/

HamTV https://amsat-uk.org/satellites/hamtv-on-the-iss/

Astro Pi http://astro-pi.org/
Twitter https://twitter.com/astro_pi

Oct 30 2015

Fort Worth students talk to ISS

Daggett Montessori Students - Credit Fort Worth ISD

Daggett Montessori Students – Credit Fort Worth ISD

Students at Daggett Montessori School in Fort Worth used amateur radio to talk to astronaut Kjell Lindgren KO5MOS, aboard the International Space Station.

Grace Jordan talks to the ISS

Grace Jordan talks to the ISS

Before the contact Cowtown Amateur Radio Club member Keith Pugh W5IU explained to the students how they are able to talk to the ISS.

The contact, which took place on Thursday, October 29, gave the students the opportunity to ask questions about life in space. The Star-Telegram newspaper reports Grace Jordan, a seventh-grader, wondered about the effects of microgravity on food digestion.

Kjell used the amateur radio station in the ESA ISS Columbus module callsign NA1SS, while the students used the station K5COW set up by Cowtown Amateur Radio Club in the school auditorium.

Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) lets students worldwide experience the excitement of talking directly with crew members of the International Space Station, inspiring them to pursue interests in careers in science, technology, engineering and math, and engaging them with radio science technology through amateur radio.

Watch Daggett Montessori MS Talk to Space Station 2015

Read the Star-Telegram story at
http://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/community/fort-worth/article41837055.html

ARISS http://ariss.org/

Oct 10 2015

AMSAT-UK at the RSGB Convention

Howard Long G6LVB talking about the FUNcube Dongle SDR at the RSGB Convention Gala Dinner

Howard Long G6LVB talking about the FUNcube Dongle SDR at the RSGB Convention Gala Dinner

The after-dinner speaker at the RSGB Convention Saturday night Gala dinner was Howard Long, G6LVB, who spoke about the trials and tribulations involved in developing the ground station segment of the FUNcube satellite project which became the successful FUNcube Dongle SDR.

The Astro Pi will be used by UK Astronaut Tim Peake KG5BVI on the ISS

The Astro Pi will be used by UK Astronaut Tim Peake KG5BVI on the ISS

On Sunday, October 11 at 11:45 BST Ciaran Morgan M0XTD gave a presentation to the Convention about Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) and the upcoming mission to the ISS by UK astronaut Tim Peake KG5BVI.

Ciaran described the Astro Pi which Tim will be using on the ISS. It is hoped this will be used as a video source for the Space Station’s HamTV system.

School Shortlist for Tim Peake Space Station Contact
https://amsat-uk.org/2015/07/14/school-shortlist-tim-peake-iss/

FUNcube Dongle SDR http://FUNcubeDongle.com/

Read the Essex Ham review of the RSGB Convention at
http://www.essexham.co.uk/news/rsgb-convention-2015-review.html

Aug 16 2015

ARISS International Meet This Week in Tokyo

ARISS LogoARISS International Delegates, its Board of Officers, and international team members will meet at Big Sight, Tokyo, Japan on August 20-23, 2015 for a critical meeting to discuss ARISS strategy, teamwork, hardware and operations.

Delegates are voting members of ARISS-I representating the 5 ISS member regions: United States, Russia, Japan, Canada and Europe.

The meeting will open with remarks from meeting host Keigo Komuro, JA1KAB from ARISS Japan and JARL.

Other agenda items will include:
• Welcome by the Japanese Space Agency JAXA & an Overview of the JAXA Innovative Satellite Technology Demonstration Program
• ARISS working group business discussions and reports, including: regional reports, ARISS Terms of Reference update, space agency coordination status, sustainability & fundraising and ARISS future endeavors
• Technical discussions on current and future hardware developments, including: Next Generation ARISS Radio Systems, the Astro-Pi Project, and an update on the Ham-TV system
• Operations discussions, including presentations on: Educational Activities, International Expansion & Planning of SSTV. School
Selection and Regional Scheduling Procedures and plans for the
upcoming Tim Peake Mission

Along with their ambitious schedule the delegates will begin each day with an opportunity for informal discussions and will have the opportunity to visit the Tsukuba Space Center.

[ANS thanks ARISS-I for the above information]

Amateur Radio on the International Space Station
• ARISS International organisation http://www.ariss-eu.org/international.htm
• ARISS-Europe Terms of Reference http://www.ariss-eu.org/tor.htm
• ISS Amateur Radio stations http://www.ariss.org/contact-the-iss.html

Aug 4 2015

Frequencies Announced for Nayif-1 CubeSat

Deputy project manager of Nayif-1 Fatma Lootah

Deputy project manager of Nayif-1 Fatma Lootah

Nayif-1 is an educational single CubeSat project with the goal of providing an actual space project for Emirati University students. Additionally it is intended to enthuse and educate young people about radio, space physics and electronics.

The 1U CubeSat is a collaboration between the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center and the American University of Sharjah both in the United Arab Emirates.

Nayif-1 - Credit Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre

Nayif-1 – Credit Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre

The spacecraft will only require simple ground station antennas and an SDR dongle receiver. This will make it uncomplicated for schools and colleges to use with their students.

It is anticipated Nayif-1 will be launched into an elliptical, sun synchronous, Low Earth Orbit (LEO) about 400 by 750 km. In such an orbit the satellite passes over the Emirates at least twice a day. This would allow the morning passes to be used for educational purposes and the evening passes for Amateur Radio communications.

The student team will develop and operate a special ground station for this spacecraft. They will also be developing a unique “Dashboard” to display the received telemetry data and greetings messages in Arabic.

Nayif-1 will incorporate a novel autonomous attitude determination and control system. This will be the first flight of this system. Additionally it will carry a UHF to VHF linear transponder that will have up to 0.5 watt output and which can be used by Radio Amateurs worldwide for SSB and CW communications.

A launch is planned for late 2015 on a SpaceX Falcoln 9.

IARU coordinated frequencies for NAYIF-1:
• 145.940 MHz 1200 bps BPSK FUNcube beacon
• 500 mW inverting SSB/CW linear transponder
– 435.045-435.015 MHz Uplink
– 145.960-145.990 MHz Downlink

Follow Nayif-1 on Twitter https://twitter.com/Nayifone

Nayif-1 https://amsat-uk.org/satellites/communications/nayif-1/