ISS Packet Mail box is over half full.

On December 17, 2002 I logged into the ISS Personal Message System (PMS)
and counted over 174 mail message on the PMS waiting to re read or
deleted.

The ARISS (a joint effort of AMSAT, the ARRL, NASA, the ARISS international partners including Canada, Russia, the European Partners, and Japan) operations team wishes to announce the following very tentative schedule for ARISS school contacts.

A Breathtaking Saturn During Closest Encounter

Saturn slices through the Taurus as Orion looks on
Huntsville - Dec 17, 2002

Thirty years ago, Earth and Saturn had an extraordinary close encounter. The ringed planet was only 1.2 billion km from Earth--about as close as it can get--and its rings were tipped toward us. The view through a telescope was simply breathtaking. Next week it's going to happen again.

It started on Saturday, Dec. 7th, when our planet entered a cloud of dusty space-debris. The meteor rate is low now, because we're still in the outskirts of the cloud, but it will increase as Earth penetrates the debris field. "We expect to see more than 100 meteors per hour when the shower peaks on Saturday, Dec. 14th," says Bill Cooke of the NASA/Marshall Space Environments Team.