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 Previous: In Brief |  Next: George Thurston III, W4MLE, SK |
NEWINGTON, CT, Mar 22, 2001--Expedition 2 crew member Susan Helms, KC7NHZ, had barely settled in aboard the International Space Station when she apparently felt the urge to do a little hamming. Helms, who traveled to the ISS last week aboard the shuttle Discovery with crewmates Yury Usachev, RW3FU--the Expedition 2 commander--and fellow US astronaut Jim Voss--worked a couple of US stations March 18 and 19 and was monitored by another in Australia.
The ham who had snagged the first-ever casual ham contact with the ISS--Randy Shriver, KG3N, of Hanover, Pennsylvania--got lucky again with the Expedition 2 crew. Shriver heard Helms calling CQ early on the morning of March 18 and gave her a call. "Using NA1SS she came back to me," he reports. "I was able to talk to her for 45 seconds." On November 13, Shriver worked Expedition 1 crew commander William Shepherd, KD5GSL. A ham for about 20 years, Shriver says he built his station specifically for SAREX contacts. In 1985, he worked Tony England, W0ORE, aboard the shuttle Challenger.
Astronaut Susan Helms, KC7NHZ, at work aboard the shuttle Discovery before the crew transfer. [NASA Photo] |
Samuel Danner, N3MPE, of Smithsburg, Maryland, had his police scanner set to a ISS 2-meter downlink frequency on the off chance he might hear something. "I listened--I was prepared for possibly hearing them, but I wasn't prepared for the shock when I really heard her [Helms'] voice calling CQ," he says. Danner says he ran out to his car, equipped with a scanner programmed with ISS frequencies, to listen further. "It was 29 degrees in the car; I didn't care." he said, adding that he could even see the space station overhead at the time. "It was fantastic!" Danner also was able to make contact with NA1SS.
Gordon Williams, VK6IU, reports that he heard Helms calling while the ISS was over Western Australia on March 18. Williams has served in the past as a telebridge station for Space Amateur Radio EXperiment school contacts.
Helms likely will handle on-air duties next week when the first Amateur Radio on the International Space Station school contacts for the Expedition 2 crew are scheduled to occur. Students at the John B. Reible School in Santa Rosa, California, are scheduled to speak with the crew March 26 or 27, while students at Vicksburg High School in Mississippi are scheduled for April 4 or April 6.
At the Reible school, teacher Kristi Weber, KD6LSZ, will be assisted by Herb Sullivan, K6QXB at the school site, and Bill Hillendahl, KH6GJV, running the telebridge station at Santa Rosa Junior College ARC's W6SRJ that will be linked via 70 cm to the school. The school boasts about 500 youngsters in kindergarten through sixth grade.
Radio contact coordinator Tim Bosma, W6ISS, says Weber's students have been reading up on the ISS crew and performing some microgravity experiments suggested by NASA. In addition, they have built a model parafoil to simulate the ISS emergency vehicle NASA is testing and have worked on schematics and models of the ISS to see how it's built.
The official NASA photo of the Increment 2 crew: (L-R) Jim Voss, Commander Yury Usachev, RW3FU, and Susan Helms, KC7NHZ. The flags along the bottom represent the International Space Station partners. [NASA Photo] |
Bosma says Weber and her youngsters have developed an ambitious list of two dozen questions--one for each member of the class--to be asked and answered during the approximately 10-minute pass. Questions touch on sleep, training, exercise, food, and if the crew would be interested in traveling to Mars.
The following week, students in Mississippi will have to get up especially early on the appointed day, since passes are between 4 and 5 AM there. Phil Fortenberry, N5PF, who's assisting with the project, reports the students have been practicing their questions and "are very excited about this." He reports that Vicksburg Amateur Radio Club President Eddie Pettis, N5JGK, has the equipment in place and working and was in the process of setting up and testing a backup station. ARISS schools are advised to have two complete stations set up and ready to go for school contact, a practice that mirrors the system redundancy NASA is well-known for.
The Expedition 1 crew of William Shepherd, KD5GSL, Yuri Gidzenko, and Sergei Krikalev, U5MIR, arrived back on Earth this week aboard the Discovery. Usachev, Helms and Voss were reported to be adapting to the new quarters they'll call home for the next four months.
For more information on the ARISS program, visit the ARISS Web site, http://ariss.gsfc.nasa.gov.
| Previous: In Brief | Next: George Thurston III, W4MLE, SK |
