I would like to wish all the IFC members a very Merry Christmas and a happy healthy new year.

73

Doug(KC8FKS)

As children in Central Florida and around the world prepare to celebrate Christmas, Santa and NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) landing convoy team are rumored to have conducted secret exercises to address any possible contingencies that might arise during Santa's annual space flight.

Submitted by Arthur - N1ORC
The coming year will be the most challenging ever for
construction of the International Space Station. Already
more than two-thirds of the way through the assembly of its
core structure, international crews face a full and busy
construction schedule.

Submitted by Arthur N1ORC
After almost a month on the International Space Station, crewmembers were
literally bouncing off the walls of the orbiting laboratory on Monday.
They wound up the week with extensive and successful robotic arm
operations on Thursday and on Friday worked.....

During the period of the 11th through the 19th of January 2003 the Marconi Radio Club of Massachusetts will operate a special event station to celebrate the 100th Anniversary of Guglielmo Marconi's first spark gap transmission between the United States and Europe.
The original 1903 message was a greeting from President Theodore Roosevelt
to King Edward VII of the United Kingdom.
The ISS has confirmed a communication schedule with the Marconi Special Event Station.Info here

We have added two other maps under TRACK THE STATION block.Now there are available maps with autoupdating function and you don't need to reload manually the image longer.

The ISS FanClub Staff

Submitted by Arthur - N1ORC
One year ago this week, NASA ground controllers deactivated Deep Space
1--an extraordinary spacecraft that tested a dozen advanced technologies
and then, as a bonus, flew perilously close to the nucleus of a comet.
The craft is asleep now, permanently, but perhaps it has one more
contribution to make ... to the field of archeology in the next
millennium.

FULL STORY at NASA

Submitted by Arthur - N1ORC
NASA flight
controllers in Houston's Mission Control Center will watch
over Santa throughout the night, just as they watch over the
International Space Station and its crew every day.....

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.