ARISS-EUROPE NEWS BULLETIN,
Amateur Radio on board the International
Space Station (ARISS) is an international working group of amateur radio societies of the
countries participating to the ISS, devoted to implementing the amateur radio station
on board the ISS and in charge of planning school contacts with astronauts.
More information is available on the
ARISS-Europe website <http://www.ariss-eu.org/>
ISS COMMEMORATIVE EVENT
The ARISS team has had several inquiries
on what happened regarding crew operation of the ISS Ham radio system during
the start of the ISS Commemorative Event this past weekend. With this
e-mail I intend to give you all as many facts as we have at this time. As
we get more information, we will pass it along.
To our knowledge, it appears that the ISS
crew was not on the air this weekend. This is based on a number of
reports from hams all across the world. I would like to thank all that
took time out to report what happened during the ISS passes in their part of
the world. It is helping us convey solid information to our home
organizations and to the space agencies.
Several of you were questioning whether
the ARISS team did, in fact, get a message to the crew on this weekend's
plans. I can tell you that I am certain of this. As was mentioned
in my last e-mail, after communications were sent to Mike Foale regarding the
special event (through the NASA channels), Mike Foale had responded back that
he would support on the order of about 2 passes per weekend. As I stated,
the ARISS team got this information through NASA and directly from Mike. Also,
today I got confirmation that final information regarding this weekend's event
(pass times that we shared with you on the 26th of November) was uplinked to
the ISS crew on Friday. So our information was there and the crew knew
about the event.
Now, what happened?
We have discussed this with the NASA
folks and there are two events that potentially could have impeded on Mike's
ability to get on the air. The first is that the ISS crew have had some
serious issues with the Treadmill and it is understood that Mike put a bunch of
time (his own time) this past weekend working on this important device that is
critical for the crew's health and well being. The other event is the
"crushing" noise heard at the aft end of the Service Module this past
week. It has been reported in the press that the crew heard this noise
and then initially thought that the Service Module was hit with debris. At
this point, this is not believed to be the case,
however, the ISS International partners have asked the Russian team to look
into the matter further since it occurred in their segment. It was
speculated that Mike and Sasha might have gotten instructions from the Russian
team to scour the Service Module in an effort to determine the cause of this
odd noise.
Some have stated this but I will
reiterate it. The Expedition 8 crew are truly die-hard hams. Those
of you who have been around a while know that Mike Foale was extremely active
on the bands during his flights on the Space Shuttle and on Mir. Sasha
Kaleri was also a very active ham on Mir. We have two great hams on
board. We also have two guys running an entire space station with a large
cadre of scientific experiments. A year
ago, that took 3 people. So you can imagine that they are quite
busy. This makes ISS Ham more vulnerable when issues occur on ISS. As
we continually state, operation of the ISS Ham radio is "completely
contingent upon the crew schedule and other duties or issues that might crop up
on ISS." We are impressed that the crew agreed to support the
ISS Commemorative event. And we hope that they will be on the air in the
very near future.
So, where do we go from here?
Well, we have a request into NASA
to ask the Expedition 8 crew more details on what occurred this past weekend
and, more importantly, if they will be will and able to support some (probably
2) passes this weekend. As we get more information, we will share it with
you.
I hope this helps explain what we know at
this time. The ARISS team recognizes that it is very frustrating to get
expectations up and then not meet expectations. It is never our intent to
do this to the world-wide amateur radio community. But we do want to
alert you of potential opportunities as they become available. We will
continue to do this, as long as you all remember that these contacts are
contingent upon the crew schedule.
73,
Frank Bauer, KA3HDO
ARISS International Chairman