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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, KB8MTZ
- 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.
Return to NA8SA home page.
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