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"If all goes well, the new European Columbus module and Japanese Kibo module will be installed on the ISS in the next 12 months," Bauer told the ARISS team. "This substantial workload on the crew is impacting ARISS operations directly."
Bauer explained that the launch of any new or replacement ham radio gear or computers to support ARISS operations "has been significantly curtailed due to the extremely limited 'upmass' capability." That's NASA's way of saying the cargo weight limits on construction flights are very tight.
"There are just too many higher priority activities from an international space agency perspective, and frankly we are a lower priority," he continued. "The extra workload on the crew has taken its toll on ARISS -- they have had very little extra time for Amateur Radio activities beyond school contacts."
Bauer concedes that while these developments are "somewhat frustrating" both to the ham radio community at large and to the ARISS International Team, ARISS nonetheless is pleased that space station crew members have "been able to speak so often with youth groups worldwide, piquing their interest in Amateur Radio, science, technology, engineering and math."
One hoped-for fix during the recent flight of civilian space traveler Charles Simonyi, KE7KDP, was that Simonyi would be able to restore the Kenwood D700 ARISS Phase 2 transceiver to full functionality after it was inadvertently reprogrammed during Expedition 13. That has kept the packet system off the air.
"The ARISS team worked diligently with the Simonyi team to get Charles licensed, trained, and prepared to perform the Kenwood reprogramming," Bauer explained. "Unfortunately, the ARISS team hit a major hurdle a few weeks before Charles's launch."
Bauer said ARISS learned at the eleventh hour that additional software certification would be required to allow Simonyi to reprogram software to be used on the ISS computers.
"Through heroic efforts by the team, final software certification was successfully completed," Bauer reported this week. "Unfortunately, this was completed only a few days before Charles' return from space." As a result, there was not enough time for Simonyi to reprogram the D700.
"This last minute hiccup in software certification was not predictable," Bauer allowed, "so there was no way the ARISS team could have better prepared for Charles' flight."
Bauer says that at this point, it appears that reprogramming the D700 to get it back to its normal ARISS configuration "will require a substantial, concerted effort with full cooperation from our international colleagues and the Russian and US space agencies." This means identifying, purchasing (if necessary), certifying, testing and flying the components necessary to ensure the reprogramming is successful, he pointed out.
Given the challenge of weight restrictions on shuttle payloads devoted to transporting construction materials, Bauer said, the process "will likely take several months to accomplish, as the team will have to begin from square one."
ARISS meanwhile is looking into some partial, temporary workarounds. In the near term, ARISS will request the crew do some investigative analysis of the Phase 2 station. "This will enable the ARISS team to determine if the radio can be partially restored to provide some of the unattended operations that it once provided," Bauer said. "With Charles's successful landing, we have started down this new path."
Despite the setbacks, Bauer vowed that ARISS will continue working aggressively on the issue. "While our plans to have Charles reprogram the radio were thwarted, we were happy that he could speak to so many hams around the world during his short stay, and capture the imagination of students around the globe," he said.
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