On Jan 11, at 1:11pm, students at St. Albert the Great School talked with astronaut Bill McArthur, part of the Expedition 12 crew, on the International Space Station via amateur radio.  This was possible through the ARISS - Amateur Radio on ISS - program. Several hams and members of the NASA Glenn Amateur Radio Club:

• Nancy, KC4IYD
• Phil, KC8SRG
• Al, KB8MZT
• Mike, N8PJD
• Glenn, AF8C
• Tom, N8EFO

were responsible in helping St. Albert make this successful contact.  In addition, AESP Jim Fitzgerald presented a 35 minute program on NASA Space Exploration while we were waiting for the contact.

17 of the 18 students were able to ask their question to astronaut Bill McArthur during the 10 minute pass before we lost contact.  Over 800 students and about 400 faculty members, parents and friends were in St. Albert Church for this contact. Channel 8 news was present and video of the event was shown on the 6:00 news on Jan 11th.

Background:
This activity was initiated by a past NASA employee and NASA Glenn Amateur Radio Club  (NGARC) member, Art Anzic, K8BVI, who became a silent key in 2003. He helped St. Albert the Great school prepare and complete their paperwork in  2002 with the ARISS. St. Albert was his local parish. NGARC had said we would provide any help Art or the school needed. Around Sept. 2005, we were told that a contact with ISS would take place with Expedition 12. Since that time, several members of the ham club have been working with the school in updating their application form, gathering equipment, visiting the schools to find the optimum place to put up the antennas and radio equipment and explaining what would happen to the staff and teachers during the event.

The school came up with a list of questions based on input from the students and each class voted of the number 1 and number 2 question to be asked. Principal Tom Brownfield dedicated this contact to the memory of Art Anzic and the student made a successful contact with astronaut Bill McArthur.

Here is a temporary link to a page of photos. We have created an MP3 audio file of the ISS contact with St. Albert the Great. Note: This file is 9 MB in size.

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