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 Previous: ARRL In Action: What Have We Been Up To Lately? |  Next: Amateur Radio Hurricane Volunteers Needed in Louisiana, Texas |
 ISS NASA Science Officer John Phillips, KE5DRY, at the controls of the ARISS Phase 2 station. [NASA Photo] |
NEWINGTON, CT, Oct 4, 2005--Students at Tregaron Secondary School in Tregaron, Wales, questioned Expedition 11 ISS NASA Science Officer John Phillips, KE5DRY, on September 29 about life aboard the International Space Station. Serving as the Earth station for the event was the Radio Society of Great Britain's (RSGB) mobile ham station GB4FUN, controlled by Carlos Eavis, G0AKI, and operated by AMSAT UK's Howard Long, G6LVB. The contact between GB4FUN and NA1SS was arranged by the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) program. One student asked Phillips what happens to tears if you cry in space.
"Well, that may be the most interesting question of the day," Phillips responded. "I think that the tears would just stay right there on your eyes or possibly on the edge of your cheeks. They wouldn't go very far. I think maybe they'd just stay in your eyes until they evaporate."
Other students at Tregaron asked Phillips if he had any fears or concerns about living in space. Phillips told the students he didn't spend much time worrying about possible problems. "I make sure I'm prepared, but beyond that, I don't worry," he said.
As for being scared, Phillips recounted "a sort of a joke" among the US astronaut corps: "The main thing you're scared of in space is you might do something wrong and look bad, and there's a certain amount of truth to that." Phillips says he worries "a little" that he might make a mistake, but he's not frightened of anything because he has confidence in the ISS, his training and the ISS ground crew
In response to a later question asking if
he'd ever had any "embarrassing moments" in space, Phillips said only when he
makes a mistake or loses something. "The work we do is watched all the time by
the folks on the ground," he pointed out.
 The RSGB's GB4FUN mobile radio shack. |
CLICK HERE to listen to the ARISS QSO between GB4FUN and NA1SS: [9:52] |
Another student wanted to know if the spacesuits the crew wears for space walks are comfortable. "Well, not really," Phillips conceded. "The important thing is that they're inflated--they're pressurized inside--so in order to hold that kind of pressure the suits have to be kind of stiff. They also have to be kind of tight." Phillips said the suits are "very functional," but he wouldn't call them comfortable.
In all, Phillips answered 18 questions before the ISS went over the horizon and contact with the school was lost. ARISS-Europe's Gaston Bertels, ON4WF, says Phillips nontheless continued on to answer the remaining two questions on the list, and "ground stations further east could hear his answers and his signing off."
Upward of 350 students, faculty members and VIPs filled the room at Tregaron, and BBC-TV covered the event. The contact marked the first ARISS school group QSO for a school in Wales.
Science teacher Chris Greenfield took the initiative to get his school on the ARISS contact schedule. "This was a fantastic opportunity for pupils to be inspired by the concept of space and added another dimension to science education," he said afterwards. Long called it "the chance of a lifetime" that might sow a seed of interest in science, space and telecommunication as a career path.
"You never know, we might have the next Helen Sharman or Michael Foale sitting here right with us," he said. Sharman is the UK's first astronaut. Foale, KB5UAC, is a native of England. He served as the commander of ISS Expedition 8 and did a tour of duty aboard the Russian Mir space station during the 1990s.
ARISS is an international educational outreach with US participation by ARRL, AMSAT and NASA.
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