Boy and Girl Scouts at Space Jam 4, under the stars in a grass field at the Rantoul IL airport made a direct contact with the ISS via the BSA Crew 272 WB9SA Sat/Comm station Aug. 8th at 4:12 CST. Doug Wheelock talked with the Scouts as the ISS flew overhead. Crew members ran the call and shot video of the contact and the ISS flaring over head.

Videos (part 1 and 2) can be seen at:
http://www.spacejamboree.com/multimedia.php
or on YouTube by searching "crew 272 ISS" as well as past year's ISS contact videos.

Call it "American Idol" in space: NASA has launched a new contest that allows the public to pick – or even create – wake-up songs for astronauts flying on the agency's two final space shuttle missions.

NASA opened its new "Wake-up Song Contest" website Friday to allow the public to choose from a list of 40 previously played songs in the hopes of having it played during the final flight of space shuttle Discovery in November. Voting is going on now here: https://songcontest.nasa.gov/home.aspx