NASA Expedition 9 International Space Station Science Officer and Flight Engineer Mike Fincke, KE5AIT, logged what’s believed to be his first-ever Amateur Radio contact May 25 from the spacecraft’s NA1SS. The QSO also marked the first Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) school group contact for the Expedition 9 crew. The US astronaut and Russian cosmonaut and Expedition 9 Commander Gennady Padalka, RN3DT, arrived aboard the ISS in late April. Fincke advised a dozen youngsters gathered at Erie Planetarium http://www.eriecountyhistory.org/planetarium.htm in Pennsylvania, that the crew must take a space walk in the next few weeks to replace a failed remote power controller module for one of the four ISS control moment gyroscopes, or CMGs.
“I’m really looking forward to it,” Fincke told the youngsters, who attend several schools in the Erie area. In addition to the CMG repair EVA, the Expedition 9 crew will carry out two other space walks during their six-month tour.
Responding to another question, Fincke said he’s really enjoying the weightlessness of space, although he noted, some caution is in order. “I love being weightless,” he said. “I can fly around like Superman and pick up very big things.” He cautioned, however, that crew members need to “take it nice and easy” in weightlessness to avoid banging into things and injuring themselves.
For fun and recreation, Fincke said, the crew has laptop computers and can watch DVDs–although there’s no television aboard. “The whole space station is a little bit fun to play in and do fun things,” he said, “but just being aboard the International Space Station is like a dream come true, so it’s all fun–every minute of every day is really fun.”
In all, the youngsters asked 18 questions of Fincke before the ISS went over the horizon from the telebridge station of Tony Hutchison, VK5ZAI, in South Australia. MCI donated a teleconferencing link to handle the two-way audio between VK5ZAI and the planetarium. Fincke has twice before visited the Erie Planetarium, run by the Erie County Historical Society.
ARISS http://www.rac.ca/ariss is an international educational outreach
program with US participation by ARRL, NASA and AMSAT.