[Boringiss] News

[Tree N6TR]

Hello from downtown Taipei.

First - this news:  The 2 minute segment that didn't make it onto the 
news on Easter is being sent to me on VHS tape - along with the
unedited footage that the camera crew took.  It all adds up to 
about 20 minutes.  I will make sure everyone has a chance to see
it.

And now, the rest of the news:

==>SHUTTLEWORTH ENJOYS BUSY WEEK IN SPACE

It's been a busy, but apparently enjoyable, week on the radio and in the
laboratory for South African Mark Shuttleworth, who paid $20 million to
have the time of his life in space and conduct a little research.
Shuttleworth this week completed four Amateur Radio on the International
Space Station (ARISS) school contacts. On April 29 Shuttleworth spoke with
students at Bishops College--his alma mater--marking the first ARISS QSO
with a school in Africa.

"I'm living my own dream here," the 28-year-old Shuttleworth told the
Bishops students. "We need to think about our future and dream about a
better future, and I hope that this project--the realization of a
dream--will inspire some other people to pursue theirs."

Shuttleworth also thrilled several US amateurs by showing up unannounced
on 2 meters during a North American pass May 1. Shuttleworth's solo casual
operation--at the encouragement of ARISS--resulted in a string of
contacts.

"As you can imagine, I was thrilled to work him," said Stan Vandiver,
W4SV, who was at or very near the head of the line in working
Shuttleworth. "He was doing a pretty good job fielding the calls." Those
who routinely monitor the ISS 145.80 MHz downlink frequency got a hint
that something was up when they began hearing Shuttleworth's
British-accented English instead of packet bursts.

"Wow!" was the simple reaction of Bruce Weaver, K3LTM, the advisor to the
Cowanesque Valley School Amateur Radio Club in Knoxville, Pennsylvania,
after the school's KB3BRT club station made its own brief contact with
Shuttleworth.

"The class shouted 'hello' to him, and I told him our QTH and some info
about the school," Weaver said in a posting to AMSAT's SAREX (Space
Amateur Radio Experiment) reflector. "It was very exciting for everyone."

Among several other stations, Shuttleworth also spoke briefly with ARISS
International Group Chairman Frank Bauer, KA3HDO. "Thanks, Frank. Thanks
very much for your help with A-R-I-S-S," Shuttleworth said, spelling out
the acronym.

During a May 2 ARISS QSO with students gathered in Gauteng, South Africa,
Shuttleworth spoke at some length about his research projects. He
described one experiment from the University of Stellenbosch as especially
challenging and ambitious.

"No one's ever done anything like it in space before," he said. The
experiment involves carrying sheep and mice embryos and stem cells into
space to see how they react to the weightless environment. Upon his
return, the embryos and stem cells will be compared to identical embryos
and stem cells left on Earth.

Other research involves attempts to crystallize HIV and human immune
system proteins to study their structure and provide insights into
developing drugs to treat AIDS, a major health problem on the African
continent. Shuttleworth said he also was studying muscle degradation and
the ways humans burn energy in space.

Accommodations aboard the ISS are "not too bad" and "quite comfortable,"
according to Shuttleworth. "The International Space Station is all about
learning how to make space suitable for human exploration, and we still
have a very long way to go," he said. Nonetheless, he added, the food's
good and the view is fabulous.

A native of South Africa, Shuttleworth now lives in London. He and his two
crewmates--Russian cosmonaut and ISS veteran Yuri Gidzenko and European
Space Agency astronaut Roberto Vittori, IZ6ERU, blasted off April 25 from
Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome aboard a Soyuz "taxi mission." They will
begin their return to Earth May 5.

All of Shuttleworth's ARISS contacts have been via WorldCom
teleconferencing hookups using Amateur Radio Earth stations in Australia,
South Africa and the US. Vittorio is scheduled to attempt a direct 2-meter
ARISS contact with a school in Cervignano del Friuli, Italy on May 4.

ARISS is an international project with US participation by the ARRL, AMSAT
and NASA. More information is available on the ARISS Web site
<http://ariss.gsfc.nasa.gov>.

==>ISS CREW MEMBERS SOMETIMES "BUG" EACH OTHER, BURSCH TELLS STUDENTS

Astronaut Dan Bursch, KD5PNU, aboard the International Space Station,
conceded this week that he and his crew mates sometimes get on each
others' nerves. The comment came April 30 as Bursch answered questions
from an enthusiastic group of youngsters at Woodland Middle School on New
York's Long Island.

"If you can imagine taking a long family trip and never getting out of the
car for six months," Bursch said, replying to a question about whether he
and his crew mates ever get frustrated or annoyed with each other. The
three ISS crew members occasionally "bug each other" over little things,
Bursch said, and when that happens, they usually go off and do something
else by themselves.

Nearly five months in space have not blunted Bursch's sense of humor. "My
personal primary goal is to make sure that my number of launches equals my
number of landings," Bursch quipped when asked about the crew's primary
goals. He said fostering international cooperation in constructing the ISS
is an overarching objective. Education--including the ARISS school
contacts and cooperating with student experiments--also is an important
part of the ISS program, he said.

Handling Earth station duties for the 10-minute contact was Mark Steiner,
K3MS, at the controls of NN1SS at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

The Woodland contact was the first of two Amateur Radio on the
International Space Station (ARISS) school QSOs April 30--an ARISS first.
After a missed schedule earlier in the day, a contact between "space
tourist" Mark Shuttleworth and South African students was promptly--and
successfully--rescheduled.