After more than 160 days in space, ISS Expedition 25 Commander Doug Wheelock, KF5BOC -- along with Flight Engineers Shannon Walker, KD5DXB, and Fyodor Yurchikhin, RN3FI -- has returned to Earth from the International Space Station (ISS), landing in Kazakhstan on Friday, November 26. While on board the ISS, both Wheelock and Walker participated in the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) program, and made 22 ISS-to-school and ISS-to-camp QSOs. In addition, Wheelock averaged about two dozen casual QSOs each week while on board the ISS.

Expedition 25 Commander Doug Wheelock and Flight Engineers Shannon Walker and Fyodor Yurchikhin safely landed their Soyuz spacecraft on the Kazakhstan steppe on Thursday, Nov. 25, 2010, wrapping up a five-month stay aboard the International Space Station.

Russian cosmonaut Yurchikhin, the Soyuz commander, was at the controls of the spacecraft as it undocked at 8:23 p.m. EST from the station's Rassvet module. The trio landed at 11:46 p.m. (10:46 a.m. on Nov. 26 local time) at a site northeast of the town of Arkalyk.

China has formally begun its manned space station program, aiming to complete construction of a "relatively large" manned space laboratory around 2020, said a spokesman for the national manned space program.
China was aiming to develop and launch the first part of a space laboratory before 2016, focusing on breakthroughs in living conditions for astronauts and research applications, the spokesman said.

The country would develop and launch a core cabin and a second laboratory module around 2020, which would be assembled in orbit around the earth into a manned space station, he said.

Topics in this report:
1. Italian Students Question Astronaut via ARISS
2. Video of Wheelock Working Ground Stations

1. Italian Students Question Astronaut via ARISS

NASA, the US space agency, will assume more direct sponsorship of the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) program as an educational project. Among its activities, ARISS oversees the project that enables schoolchildren to speak via ham radio with astronauts aboard the International Space Station. NASA also will embrace ARISSat as an educational project for the ISS National Lab. A reconfigured, yet-to-be-named education planning group will pick up the mission of the ARISS Communications Council (ACC).

How come some people haven't made a single contact while some others have made dozens?

If you are one of those who thinks that making multiple ISS contacts is a matter of having the right equipment or having some special skills I believe you should think again.

Here is why...