More than 6,000 greetings had been sent to the Expedition 16 crew of the International Space Station through a link on the nasa.gov home page by Friday afternoon, and the number continued to grow at an increasing rate.

The greetings came from just about everywhere - South Carolina, New South Wales in Australia and the South Pole.

If those greetings had been sent by Christmas cards, the postal sacks would have weighed about 200 pounds. Just the postage would have cost more than $1,500. And there were still three days until Christmas.

Most of the electronic Christmas cards to Expedition 16 Commander Peggy Whitson and Flight Engineers Yuri Malenchenko and Dan Tani were touching, admiring and heart-felt. They included:

The first AMRASE International Aerospace Research Conference was held on December 8 in Rio de Janeiro. Brazilian astronaut Marcos Pontes was one of the speakers at the meeting. Pontes gave a presentation on his training and his participation in the Centenario Mission onboard the ISS. He also talked about the importance the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) program plays in the education of youth.

http://www.amrase.org/english.html

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