An STS-120 ARISS school contact has been planned with participants at Liceo Scientifico G.Galilei, Civitavecchia, Roma, Italy and ITI-LST Mottura Caltanisetta, Italy on 31 Oct. The event is scheduled to begin at approximately 07:33 UTC.

The contact will be a direct between station IZØJPA (Nespoli) and ground stations IZØLSG and IT9YBA. The contact should be audible in most of Europe. Interested parties are invited to listen in on the 145.80 MHz downlink. The participants are expected to conduct the conversation in Italian. Live audio from this contact can be heard on the EchoLink AMSAT (101 377) and JK1ZRW (277 208) Conference Rooms, and on the IRLP Discovery Reflector 9010. For further information, please check the calendar of events on http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/fieldops/events.php .

[img]http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/194493main_sts120_eva1_small.jpg[/img] Image Above: STS-120 Mission Specialist Doug Wheelock rides the station's robotic arm into Discovery's payload bay. Image credit: NASA TV STS-120 Mission Specialists Scott Parazynski and Doug Wheelock kicked off STS-120's first spacewalk at 6:02 a.m. EDT to prepare Harmony for removal from Discovery's payload bay. The excursion is scheduled to wrap up at about 12:32 p.m. Mission Specialist Paolo Nespoli is the spacewalk coordinator, assisting the spacewalkers with their tasks from inside the spacecraft. Mission Specialists Stephanie Wilson and Clay Anderson and Expedition 16 Flight Engineer Daniel Tani are at the controls of the station's Canadian-built robotic arm.