[Boringiss] ISS news

[Larry Tree Tyree N6TR]

==>ISS CREW COMMANDER TALKS WITH RUSSIAN STUDENTS VIA HAM RADIO

International Space Station Commander Yury Onufrienko, RK3DUO, this week
chatted via Amateur Radio with students in Russia. The Amateur Radio on the
International Space Station (ARISS) contact with Kursk Technical University
took place at 0922 UTC February 28. It marked only the second ARISS QSO with
a Russian school, and the first for Onufrienko. Using the RS0ISS call sign,
Onufrienko spent the 10-minute pass answering questions in Russian from five
students at RW3WWW, the club station at the school, located some 250 miles
south of Moscow. 

"The students were very excited and happy to talk to Yury," said club
director Valery Pikkiev, RW3WW. Assisted by his son Dimitry, RA3WPS, Pikkiev
battled reception problems that may have resulted from blocking of the space
station's amateur antenna. The same problem was reported by an Italian
listener, Andrea Bonaiuto, IT9GSV.

Despite the difficulties, the contact was considered a success by the
students and a crowd of about 25 observers and reporters. The Kursk event
was the 47th ARISS school contact since the first crew came aboard the ISS
in November 2000.

Last July 4, US astronaut Susan Helms, KC7NHZ, took to the air as RS0ISS to
speak with students at the Petersburg Junior Technical Center's club
station, RZ1AWO. That QSO marked the first ARISS European school contact.

The all-ham Expedition 4 crew of Onufrienko, Carl Walz, KC5TIE, and Dan
Bursch, KD5PNU, has been able to devote only limited time to ARISS school
contacts during its duty tour. Three spacewalks during the crew's tour--two
of them including the installation of new Amateur Radio antennas on the ISS
Service Module--have eaten into time that might otherwise have been
available for such activities. Each one-day spacewalk has involved the
entire crew for more than five days. Plans had called for an average of one
scheduled school contact per week, but crew members' free time continues to
be at a premium--with a Progress rocket docking set for late March, and
space shuttle and Soyuz taxi missions in April. The crew is due to return to
Earth in mid-May. The ARISS operations team still hopes to arrange contacts
during 2002 for each of the more than 40 schools now on the waiting list.

In other ARISS news, the Expedition 4 crew installed a new packet TNC last
weekend. The packet system now is operational for the first time with a call
sign--RS0ISS. The ARISS packet uplink is 145.99 MHz; the downlink is 145.80
MHz. Amateurs are asked not to leave messages for the crew, as no computer
is attached to the system, and the crew has little time to respond to
messages.

ARISS is an international project of AMSAT, ARRL and NASA.--Gene Chapline,
K5YFL, provided information on the Kursk contact for this report