The scheduled ARISS QSO between students assembled at Landesmuseum fuer Technik und Arbeit (Mannheim Museum), Mannheim, Germany and ESA Astronaut Thomas Reiter has been assigned a new contact time of 15:57 UTC. The contact day remains unchanged at Monday, November 20, 2006. As a result of this hourly time change this telebridge event will now be supported by ground station VK5ZAI located in Kingston SE, Australia.

Live audio will be available on IRLP and EchoLink through the ARISS Audio Distribution Project

IRLP users can connect to the main channel of "Discovery" Reflector 9010. The audio feed will begin approximately 10 minutes before the scheduled contact time. Streaming audio will also be available through www.discoveryreflector.ca:8000/listen.pls (expect a 2 to 3 minute delay on this stream).

A Space Flight Training Division Technical Interchange Meeting (TIM) was held at Johnson Space Center on November 6-10. The ARISS-Russian team from Energia, representatives from the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center (GCTC), and ARISS-U.S. members attended. As a result of the meeting, the ARISS U.S. team may be tasked to perform more of the amateur radio training to reduce the amount of time that U.S. crews spend in Russia.

Source: http://www.rac.ca/ariss/oindex.htm

In spring 2007, The History Channel plans to run a 13-segment series, "The Secret Life of Machines." One segment will cover Amateur Radio, part of which will focus on ham radio in space. ARISS delegate Rosalie White described the roles of the American Radio Relay League (ARRL), the Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation (AMSAT) and the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) to the History Channel reporter, and provided information on SuitSat-1 and SuitSat-2 and explained how the ARISS team compiles components, and designs, tests and launches its systems. Follow-up material, which covered SuitSat-1 and an ARISS school whose 5th graders built 5 types of crystal radios and compared their qualities, was sent to him.

Plans to launch a second "SuitSat" spacesuit-turned-satellite were the subject of discussions and presentations at the recent AMSAT Space Symposium and Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) International Delegates' meeting near San Francisco. Despite a weaker-than-anticipated 2-meter signal, SuitSat-1 -- a surplus Russian Orlan spacesuit fitted with an Amateur Radio transmitter -- sparked the imagination of students and the general public and turned into a public relations bonanza for Amateur Radio. ARISS now hopes to capitalize on the concept by building an even better SuitSat that will include ham radio transponders.