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 Previous: The K7RA Solar Update |  Next: Red Cross Unit Compliments Amateur Radio Assistance During Isabel |
Expedition 7 NASA ISS science officer and flight engineer Ed Lu, KC5WKJ, uses chopsticks to eat in the ISS Zvezda Service Module. [NASA Photo] |
NEWINGTON, CT, Sep 26, 2003--Students from second grade through high school at Punahou School in Honolulu, Hawaii, quizzed NASA International Space Station Science Officer Ed Lu, KC5WKJ, on September 15 about how he's faring aboard the ISS. The early morning contact between NA1SS on the ISS and WH6PN in Honolulu marked the 115th Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) school group contact. Lu told the students that living in space makes him appreciate life on Earth.
"One of the things about living in space is it makes you appreciate the things you have on the ground," Lu said, "a lot of little things that you never think about--for instance, we don't take showers up here." The other side of the coin, though was being able to see how beautiful Earth looks from space, Lu added. In response to a later question, Lu noted that living in space is not as isolating as it once was, since the crew now has access to e-mail and telephone.
Lu and Expedition 7 crew commander Yuri Malenchenko, RK3DUP, will return to Earth in October after having been aboard the ISS since April. Malenchenko and Lu became the first primary ISS crew to travel to the ISS via a Russian Soyuz TMA-2 spacecraft instead of arriving on a US space shuttle. With NASA's shuttle fleet still grounded, the crew will return on a Soyuz vehicle as well. Astronaut Mike Foale, KB5UAC, and cosmonaut Alexander Kaleri, U8MIR--both veterans of the Russian Mir space station--have been named as the ISS Expedition 8 crew.
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In responding to another question, Lu pointed out that ISS crews are quarantined for about a week before launch, in part to make sure they are not sick or coming down with something. But the quarantine period also provides some needed quiet time, "to keep you away from all of the hullabaloo that surrounds the launch," he said. "At that point you just need to study and prepare and think about your mission and get ready." Without the quarantine period, he said, "you wouldn't have any time to yourself."
"Aloha to everybody down there!" Lu said in wrapping up the
contact. He said he hoped to visit Hawaii and possibly the school within
the next year.
Wearing Russian Sokol suits, Expedition 7 crewmembers Yuri Malenchenko, RK3DUP (left) and Ed Lu, KC5WKJ, pose in the Destiny Laboratory on the ISS. [NASA Photo] |
Punahou School science center co-director Gail Peiterson said the questions asked were a representative sample chosen through a student competition.
Handling Earth station duties for the contact was Nancy Rocheleau, WH6PN, who operated from the Sacred Heart Academy station. ARISS School Contact Coordinator Tim Bosma, W6ISS, moderated the contact. Two-way audio for the QSO was provided by an MCI-WorldCom teleconferencing link.
ARISS is an international project with support from ARRL, NASA and AMSAT.
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