February 6, 2023, Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) has received schedule confirmation for an ARISS radio contact between an astronaut aboard the International Space Station (ISS) and students at the Santa Maria Nuestra Senora Diocesan School located in Ecija, Spain. ARISS conducts 60-80 of these special amateur radio contacts each year between students around the globe and crew members with ham radio licenses aboard the ISS.
Founded in 1935, Santa Maria Nuestra Senora Diocesan School is located in the city of Ecija (40.000 inhabitants), in the province of Seville (SPAIN) and offers pre-school, primary and secondary education with a student body ages 3 to 16 years. The school provides educational innovation in, STEAM, PBL (Project-based learning), programming and robotics. During the three years leading up to this ARISS contact, students learned about space exploration through hands-on activities that included constructing models of planets in our solar system, radio communications with members of the URE Seville (Union of Spanish Radio Amateurs) and completed projects from the European Space Education Resource Office-Spain (ESERO). These activities also showed students what it is like to live and work in the ISS, and included visits to the science and technology park to discover how this helps us in our daily live.
This will be a telebridge contact via Amateur Radio allowing students to ask their questions of Astronaut Josh Cassada, amateur radio call sign KI5CRH. The downlink frequency for this contact is 145.800 MHz and may be heard by listeners that are within the ISS-footprint that also encompasses the telebridge station.
The ARISS amateur radio ground station (telebridge station) for this contact is in Casale Monferrato, Italy. The amateur radio volunteer team at the station will use the callsign IK1SLD, to establish and maintain the ISS connection. The ARISS radio contact is scheduled for February 8, 2023 at 11:13 am CET (Spain), (10:13 UTC).
The public is invited to watch the live stream at: http://www.ariotti.com/. They are also streaming at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nYFP7qzUtk
As time allows, students will ask these questions:
1. Is it cold in space?
2. How do astronauts sleep in space?
3. How can data be transmitted from space to Earth in real time?
4. What do you spend your time on? Are you always working on experiments?
5. What happens if you get injured, hurt or sick in the space? Are there doctors on board?
6. How do astronauts eat and drink without gravity?
7. How do astronauts take a shower and go to the wc?
8. How can you breathe at the international station if there is no atmosphere/oxygen in space?
9. What is your main mission on the International Space Station?
10. How do you protect from orbital debris, or „space junk“?
11. What do astronauts like most about living in space?
12. Do you feel anything special as you go past the atmosphere and you stop feeling the Earth´s gravity?
13. How do you want or expect your mission to affect society?
14. What is the maximum time to stay on a space station?
15. Do your legs get numb being weightless?
16. Can plants and trees be grown on the space station?
17. How many astronauts can be on the space station?
18. Are unexplained UFO phenomena studied from the ISS?
19. What do you like most about being in space?
20. What kind of training is required to work on the ISS?
Quelle: mivanci@libero.it