1. ARISS School Contacts - Status Due to crew schedules onboard the ISS, no Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) contacts are planned at this time. The ARISS team expects contacts to resume once STS-122 launches in early February. 2. Glenden State School Receives Award for ARISS Contact An Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) contact took place between Glenden State School in Queensland, Australia and Sunita Williams, KD5PLB, on April 4, 2007. On January 26, 2008 the school was presented with an Australia Day Award in recognition of the contact. The mayor who bestowed the award noted that the contact was a very unique educational outreach activity in which the community became involved. ARISS member Shane Lynd, VK4KHZ, submitted an article covering this news to the Wireless Institute of Australia. The story and photos have been posted under News on the ARISS Website. See: http://www.rac.ca/ariss/oindex.htm

As you may or may not be aware, ARISS trains each ISS crew before they go up to the ISS on using the onboard radios and ARISS procedures. To make the training more realistic, ARISS has arranged for a local Houston school to participate in 2 simulated ARISS contacts with crewmembers in training at JSC. These two contacts will be retransmitted on IRLP via the 9010 Discovery reflector and the W5RRR repeater. Please note, that the times may fluctuate somewhat depending on the start time of the training is going and crewmember availability.

Simulated contact with Bay Area Charter Elementary School, El Lago, Texas