An International Space Station Expedition 15 ARISS school contact has been planned with students at Ashland Greenwood High School, Ashland, Nebraska USA on 29 Aug. The event is scheduled to begin at approximately 16:03 UTC.

The contact will be a direct between stations NA1SS and K0ASH. The contact should be audible in most of the central United States. Interested parties are invited to listen in on the 145.80 MHz downlink. In addition, the audio should be available via IRLP and EchoLink. The participants are expected to conduct the conversation in English.

Ashland-Greenwood Public School has 879 students and is actively engaged in providing a well rounded education. The excitement has grown in the curriculum areas of science and space because Astronaut Clay Anderson is a 1977 graduate of the school. Ashland, Nebraska, population 2,262, is located in southeastern Nebraska between Lincoln, the state capitol, and Omaha. Principal products are agriculture and light manufacturing.

An International Space Station Expedition 15 ARISS school contact has been planned with students at Amagasaki Child Science Hall, Amagasaki, Hyogo, Japan on 28 Aug. The event is scheduled to begin at approximately 08:27 UTC.

The contact will be a direct between stations NA1SS and 8N3AMA. The contact should be audible in most of Japan. Interested parties are invited to listen in on the 145.80 MHz downlink. The participants are expected to conduct the conversation in English.

ARISS SCHOOL CONTACT are members of children who are very interested in science,environment and space. They all gathered for this plan held at Amagasaki Child Science Hall. Amagasaki, the town where this ARISS program would be held, had a great problem of environmental pollution because of the industrial growth. We studied about the environment thinking of the nature of our town Amagasaki as a theme. Now,children are working very hard on practicing English for their own question to the astronaut. They are looking forward to the contact with the space and wondering what kind of answer they would get.

The next scheduled ARISS school contact supported by the ARISS Audio Distribution Group will be on Wednesday August 29 2007 @ 16:03 UTC. At that time students from Ashland Greenwood High School (www.agps.org) will be asking questions of Expedition 15 Flight Engineer Clay Anderson, KD5PLA, who will be using the amateur radio station onboard the ISS, NA1SS. The ground station for this direct contact will be K0ASH. "Live" audio feeds will be available on both EchoLink and IRLP.

IRLP users can connect to the main channel of "Discovery" Reflector 9010. with audio beginning approximately 10 minutes before the scheduled contact time. Streaming audio will also be available through the companion website www.discoveryreflector.ca (select "Live Streaming Audio" on the left sidebar). Users of this stream can expect a 2-3 minute delay in the audio.

Fifteen students who attend Kursk State University in Russia experienced a successful ARISS contact on Thursday, August 9. The students spoke with cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin, RN3FI, on board the ISS from Mount Elbrus in the Caucasus Mountains, Russia.

http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/news/

Zarya, the International Space Station's first component to go into space, passed the 50,000th orbit mark this week on August 14. Zarya, which is Russian for "Sunrise", was funded by the United States and built by Russia. It launched atop a Proton rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Nov. 20, 1998.

http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/news/