SB SAREX @ AMSAT $STS-79.001 STS-79 SAREX Mission Begins Silver Spring, Maryland USA September 16, 1996 @ 1600 UTC In full view of the space station Mir crew above, space shuttle Atlantis today lifted off into the clear pre-dawn Florida sky on time. Docking of the two spacecraft is scheduled for MET 2/18:23 (Thursday, September 19 at 0316 UTC). STS-79 is carrying the Shuttle Amateur Radio Experiment (SAREX) payload in Configuration M. Configuration M is voice-only operations on a downlink frequency of 145.840 MHz FM. Voice uplinks are on 144.45 and 144.47 MHz. Packet radio is not on Atlantis this mission. The three schools selected for a scheduled contact are Andover Middle School in Andover, Kansas; Immaculate Conception Elementary School in Celina, Ohio; and the Royal School For Girls in Haslemere, Surrey, England. The students have been preparing for their contact for several months. Random contacts will also be made with the "ham" community. Details to STS-79 amateur radio operation was provided in several releases, including AMSAT News Service Bulletin ANS-258.07 dated September 14 and the ARRL SAREX Mission STS-79 Fact Sheet STS79FCT.TXT dated July 24. The STS-79 crew members to listen for are William Readdy, Commander; Terry Wilcutt, Pilot; Tom Akers, Mission Specialist; Jay Apt, N5QWL, Mission Specialist; and Carl Walz, KC5TIE, Mission Specialist. Also listen for John Blaha, KC5TZQ, Mission Specialist, who will trade places with Shannon Lucid, Mission Specialist on Mir. Amateur radio operators are invited to post their STS-79 SAREX signal reports and technical observations on the AMSAT Internet e-mail list, sarex@amsat.org, for the benefit of all. To subscribe to the SAREX mailing list, send a message with your request to listserv@amsat.org. Be sure to include your call sign (if any), your correct e-mail address, and the proper name of the mailing list you wish to receive (SAREX). Your request will be processed manually for now, so the format of your request is not important. When posting a brief message to the list please be sure to include the standard QSL report information, your *location* (either city and country or grid square) and any additional comments. To unsubscribe from the mailing list, send another message with your request to listserv@amsat.org. To receive a STS-79 QSL card, send your 2-way report or heard-only (SWL) report to: ARRL EAD, STS-79 QSL, 225 Main Street, Newington, CT 06111-1494 USA. Include the following information in your QSL or report: STS-79, date, time in UTC, frequency and mode. In addition, you must also include an SASE using a large, business-sized envelope if you wish to receive a card. Here are the current Atlantis on-orbit keplerian elements as provided by Gil Carman, WA5NOM, in Houston, Texas: STS-79 1 24324U 96057A 96260.67910015 .00047696 00000-0 80761-4 0 9048 2 24324 51.6515 23.6754 0036957 348.3960 11.6363 16.02012967 60 Here are the current keplerian elements for space station Mir as provided by Roy Hoad, WA5QGD, in the most recent AMSAT distribution of KEPS, ORBS-257.N, dated September 13: MIR 1 16609U 86017A 96256.53225558 .00002633 00000-0 29560-4 0 6602 2 16609 51.6543 43.9630 0009971 166.3428 193.8496 15.61900319504340 For those without satellite tracking programs, these SAREX bulletins will periodically list space shuttle Atlantis rise and set times for major cities around the world. There are spectacular naked-eye sighting opportunities for earthbound individuals in particular geographical locations during the mission, including in the USA and Canada just before local sunrise. For sighting information for your location, you may point your Web browser to URL: http://shuttle.nasa.gov/sts-79/orbit/orbiter/sighting/sighting.html Submitted by (Pat Kilroy, WD8LAQ for) Frank H. Bauer, KA3HDO for the SAREX Working Group /EX ======================================================================== Patrick L. Kilroy Phone: 301-286-5910 Engineer Fax: 301-286-1695 NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center E-mail: pat.kilroy@gsfc.nasa.gov Building 6, Code 311 WWW URL: http://arioch.gsfc.nasa.gov/ Greenbelt, Maryland 20771 310/310.html ========================================================================= .