Tomorrow a scheduled ARISS contact will take place in Italy and Italian Astronaut Paolo Nespoli will respond to questions asked by the students. It's a joyful event for Italy and anybody who is interested will be able to participate by simply tuning a portable radio on 145.800 MHz.

Anybody except students who reside in the Venice area.

Why? The explanation is simple, but hard to believe: the Italian Amateur Radio Association (or ARI, Chioggia section) decided to install  the IR3UEF repeater right on 145.800 MHz, the worldwide ISS downlink.

Apparently, Italy is not the only country invading the ISS frequencies, but still a good example to start investigating this issue.

UPDATE
11 January 2001: The 145.800 MHz port of IR3UEF has been shut down. Read more

NASA managers are evaluating potential launch dates for space shuttle Discovery in late February and working to see if International Space Station on orbit operations would allow a launch as early as Feb. 24. More will be known next week and managers hope to set a launch date by the end of next week.