On Nov. 30 I made a short contact with the ISS at 16:05 EST, I talked with Mike Fincke. Today Dec. 1st I heard but could not copy sstv from ARISS

An International Space Station Expedition 18 ARISS school contact has been planned with participants at Quispamsis Elementary/Middle School, Quispamsis, New Brunswick, Canada on 04 December. The event is scheduled to begin at approximately 1823 UTC.

The contact will be a direct between stations NA1SS and VE9LC. The contact should be audible over eastern North America. Interested parties are invited to listen in on the 145.80 MHz downlink. The participants are expected to conduct the conversation in English. The event is also planned to be streamed live at http://www.aliant.net/SpaceStation once the link is activated.

Seems a lot of folks are confused between when the VC-H1 batteries might be running low. If the screen is black, then it is most likely that the image was shot when the ISS was past the terminator (dark side of the Earth). If the image has a distinct purple hue to it then the batteries are low enough that the video portion of the unit cannot capture an image but the rest of the unit's capabilities are still intact.

If the batteries die after the crew goes to sleep, it will likely be purple until the unit is completely drained and we won't see anything until they replace them after they wake up. If we get lucky, and they replace them just before calling it a night, then we should see about 8 more hours of images.