A dozen youngsters at a charter school in Tempe, Arizona enjoyed the opportunity of a lifetime when they spoke via Amateur Radio August 17 with astronaut John Phillips, KE5DRY, aboard the International Space Station.
The direct 2-meter contact between N7HPR at D.W. Higgins Institute and NA1SS in space was arranged by the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) program. Philips requested the contact because his 12-year-old nephew Ben Mackowski is a seventh grader at Higgins. In all, the youngsters, who ranged from second through eighth graders, managed to fire off nearly two dozen questions before the ISS went out of range. Among them was the nearly inevitable “food question.”
“Canned and dried foods,” Phillips responded when asked what kinds of foods the crew eats in space. “Unfortunately, there’s no ice cream.”
Another youngster was curious about whether meteorites could collide with the space station. Phillips said they could, but it’s also possible to maneuver the ISS to avoid them.
In their free time, he told the students, he and crew mate Sergei Krikalev, U5MIR–the Expedition 11 commander–enjoy reading books and magazines and staying in touch with their families via e-mail. “We don’t get a lot of free time,” Phillips explained.
Phillips responded to fourth grader Anastasia Plyasunova first in her native Russian, then in English. She’d asked if ISS crew members can vote from space and how many times the space station orbits Earth each day. Space station crew members can vote from space, he said, and the ISS orbits Earth every 91 minutes.
Steve Bible, N7HPR, served as the control operator for the event. “At the end of the pass when the static took over,” he recounted, “I thought to cheer to seal the excitement of the contact and break the tension in the room. It did!” Bible had help from Joe Julicher, N9WXU, who set up a laptop computer displaying a real-time graphic of the ISS passing overhead. A parent, Ward Brown, held the microphone for the students to ask their questions. ARISS International Chairman Frank Bauer, KA3HDO, served as the mentor for the contact.
In the spirit of the occasion, students and staff members at Higgins wore T-shirts bearing the legend, “I Went to School Today and All I Got to Do was Talk to an Astronaut.”
The Higgins QSO marked the 190th ARISS school group contact since the first ISS crew came aboard in 2000. After the approximately 10-minute contact, several students remarked that they’d remember the day.
A number of news media covered the event, including a couple of newspapers and two television stations, both of which aired reports on their evening newscasts. Among the distinguished guests in the audience of students, parents, administrators and faculty was Tempe Mayor Hugh Hallman.
ARISS http://www.rac.ca/ariss is an international educational outreach with US participation by ARRL, AMSAT and NASA.