Astronaut Leroy Chiao, KE5BRW, used his recently minted ham radio license for the first time November 19 to speak with students in southeastern Italy from NA1SS aboard the International Space Station. Arranged by the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) program, the QSO also kicked off a series of educational contacts for the Expedition 10 crew, which arrived aboard the ISS in October.
“It’s a great pleasure to be addressing you from the International Space Station,” Chiao told the youngsters as the contact got under way. “This is my first ham radio contact, so I’m honored to be sharing this experience with you.” Chiao got his license in June while training for his ISS mission.
Posing questions from Earth were youngsters from two elementary schools and a comprehensive school in Polignano-a-Mare, ranging in age from 6 to 14. Members of a local Amateur Radio Club set up a satellite Earth station at one elementary school and a backup station at the other elementary school. They also established audio and video links from the station to monitors in the other two schools’ auditoriums. Michele Mallardi, IZ7EVR, was the control operator.
Responding to a question about the crew’s exercise regimen, Chiao stressed how important it is that he and Expedition 10 Flight Engineer and cosmonaut Salizhan Sharipov exercise daily during their six-month duty tour. “We have two hours of exercise scheduled every day,” he said. The space travelers work out using either a treadmill or stationary bicycle, Chiao explained. There’s also a piece of equipment that “mimics the effects of weightlifting,” he said.
One youngster asked the now-standard “food question,” and Chiao managed to regionalize his answer. “We have a variety of items we can choose from, including some Italian dishes,” he said. “Some of my favorites include classics like spaghetti and also tortellini.”
Others wanted to know if the crew sometimes felt alone, how they talked to their families, what they did when they were not working and whether it was easy to acclimate to weightlessness. In all, Chiao managed 18 questions during the approximately eight-minute contact. Just before the ISS went out of range, Mallardi aired the students’ farewells and the audience’s applause.
Onlookers at the Earth station included not only pupils and teachers but several high-level local, regional and national government officials as well as representatives of the military. The event generated news accounts via several radio and TV outlets and attracted reporting teams from print media that included the Amateur Radio publications Radio Rivista and Radio Kit Elettronica.
ARISS http://www.rac.ca/ariss/ is an educational outreach with US participation by ARRL, AMSAT and NASA.