With apologies to singer Billy Joel, US astronaut Ed Lu, KC5WKJ, is “The Piano Man” in space. During a July 14 contact arranged as part of the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station program, Lu told students at Space Camp Turkey–home of YM3SCT–that one of the things he enjoys doing in his off-hours is playing the piano.
“We have a small piano up here. It’s an electronic piano, and I like to play the piano in my spare time,” Lu explained to the 124 space campers at Space Center Turkey in Izmir. Twenty of the youngsters–who were from the US, Turkey, Greece, Cyprus, Israel and Azerbaijan–got to ask questions of the astronaut during the ham radio/teleconference linkup. An MCI teleconference line handled two-way audio between the space camp in Turkey and the International Space Station Amateur Radio Club, NN1SS, in Maryland, where ARISS Chairman Frank Bauer, KA3HDO, sat at the controls.
The ARISS contact kicked off a week of activities at Space Camp Turkey. ARISS Vice Chairman Gaston Bertels, ON4WF, in Belgium served as mentor and moderator for the contact, while Aziz Sasa, TA1E, managed arrangements at the Space Camp.
Responding to a question about where the ISS crew gets its water, Lu told the space campers that water arrives in huge containers aboard Progress supply rockets from Russia. The water, he said, serves two purposes: it’s used to drink, and it’s used to generate oxygen to breathe.
“I do want to say that I do pass over Turkey very often, and it is a very beautiful country,” Lu said as a coda to the contact. “I’ve looked down, and I’ve taken a number of nice photographs of the cities there, and I can tell you live in a wonderful place. It’s quite beautiful.”
Sasa, who is president of TRAC, Turkey’s International Amateur Radio Union member-society, said he thought the contact had made a big impression on the youngsters and hoped some of them would become interested in Amateur Radio as a result of the experience. Nearly 200 others attended the event, including news media.
ARISS is an international program with participation by ARRL, AMSAT and NASA.