An International Space Station Expedition 15 ARISS school contact has been planned with participants at Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, Washington, DC., USA on 29 Sep. The event is scheduled to begin at approximately 16:28 UTC.

The contact will be a telebridge between stations NA1SS and WH6PN. The contact should be audible in Hawaii. 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.

The Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum maintains the largest collection of historic air and spacecraft in the world. It is also a vital center for research into the history, science, and technology of aviation and space flight, as well as planetary science and terrestrial geology and geophysics. This ARISS contact is part of the family day events Commemorating 50 Years in Space. This event is made possible by the generous support of the Charles Simonyi Fund for Arts and Sciences.

Malaysian spaceflight participant Sheikh Muszhaphar Shukor will launch into space with the Expedition 16 crew on October 10. Shukor has his Malaysian callsign, 9W2MUS, and expects to participate in several Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) contacts during his 10 day visit to the ISS.

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

A busy week of science, maintenance and preparations aboard the
International Space Station kicked off Monday with a reboost of the
orbital complex.

On Monday afternoon, the Zvezda Service Module's engines were fired to
raise the space station to the correct altitude for the upcoming Soyuz
TMA-11 and Space Shuttle Discovery dockings in October.

Earlier Monday, Flight Engineer Clay Anderson conducted a ham radio
session with students at the Heidelberg University for Applied Sciences
in Heidelberg, Germany.

http://www.amsat.org/amsat/archive/sarex/48hour/msg01077.html

Inside the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in
Florida, technicians have attached Discovery to the external fuel tank
and twin solid rocket boosters atop the mobile launch platform, as
launch processing continues.

Discovery is currently scheduled to roll out to Launch Pad 39A aboard
the crawler transporter on Sept. 30. In advance of the space shuttle's
arrival, technicians will transfer to the launch pad the payload
canister containing the International Space Station's Harmony module.
Discovery's launch on mission STS-120 is targeted for Oct. 23.

htt