The ARRL Foundation has granted an additional $2000 toward the cost of constructing and installing Amateur Radio antennas and equipment on the International Space Station's Columbus module, set to launch later this year. Columbus will house an additional Amateur Radio station, including the first digital Amateur Radio TV (DATV) station in space as well as a ham radio transponder. Funding to finish and install ham radio antennas on the European Space Agency (ESA)-built laboratory module has been uncertain, however. Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) Vice Chairman Gaston Bertels, ON4WF, says donations from various sources covered a payment of 9000 Euros (approximately $12,000) in March. A second payment is due this fall. The ARRL Foundation earlier contributed $5000 to the project. Other donations have come from AMSAT-NA and AMSAT-UK, among other organizations, as well as from many individual donors. The yet-to-be-built Columbus Amateur Radio gear will make it possible for ARISS to establish wideband and video operations for the first time and allow continuous transponder operation. AMSAT-Belgium has set up a bank account to receive additional donations for the Columbus project. Details are on the ARISS-EU Columbus Web page (if you have a PayPal account you can easily make a donation by clicking the "Donate" button in the left column).

Space Day 2007 at the National Air and Space Museum
Saturday, May 05 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM
Throughout the National Mall building
Admission: Free

Space Day 2007 will be another action-packed day of astronaut appearances, hands-on activities, book signings, tours, and special stories for children, all surrounded by the world's most famous space artifacts.

Especially exciting will be a sneak peek at the much-anticipated successor to the space shuttle, the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle. This Lockheed Martin-designed spacecraft of the future will be on view in the shadow of one of the most historic spacecraft of the past - the Apollo 11 command module, Columbia.

The Expedition 15 crew aboard the International Space Station completed its first week of station orientation as the crew worked with experiments and hardware maintenance.

Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and flight engineers Oleg Kotov and Suni Williams began the week with a couple light duty days after the busy handover operations with the former crew. Expedition 14 Commander Michael Lopez-Alegria and Russian crewmate Mikhail Tyurin, accompanied by spaceflight participant Charles Simonyi, returned to Earth on Saturday, April 21, and are at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia, for several weeks of post-mission debriefing and rehabilitation.

HOUSTON - After several months working aboard the International Space Station, NASA astronaut Suni Williams will come back to Earth aboard the space shuttle Atlantis, targeted for launch June 8. That shuttle mission, STS-117, will carry her successor, astronaut Clay Anderson, to the station to begin his duty as an Expedition 15 flight engineer.

The exchange of Anderson and Williams was originally planned for the STS-118 mission, now targeted for launch in August. However, that flight, first set to fly in June, had to be postponed after an unexpected hail storm damaged Atlantis' external fuel tank and delayed STS-117.

In an Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) program progress report this week, ARISS International Chair Frank Bauer, KA3HDO, has address some questions regarding ARISS operations and equipment upgrade and repair. Bauer says that with the successful space shuttle return to flight, ISS construction again has shifted into high gear, with the delivery and assembly of two new ISS modules now on the near horizon. But that activity's not without a downside for Amateur Radio activity from the ISS.

Complete story at http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2007/04/25/101/?nc=1

An International Space Station Expedition 15 ARISS school contact has been planned with students at Samuel-von-Pufendorf Gymnasium, Floeha, Germany on 28 April. The event is scheduled to begin at approximately 14:19 UTC.

The contact will be a direct between stations NA1SS and DL0GYM. The contact should be audible in most of Europe. Interested parties are invited to listen in on the 145.80 MHz downlink. The participants are expected to conduct the conversation in English.

Samuel-von-Pufendorf Gymnasium leads the pupils to the Abitur in a 8 year course beginning with grade 5. More than 600 young people in all grades are taught by 65 teachers. The school amateur radio club DL0GYM was founded in 2003. The main purpose is to prepare pupils to pass the amateur radio examination and become licensees. The club station supports education by demonstrating the possibilities of modern amateur radio technologies like packet radio, satellite communication via the "OSCARs", ATV, SSTV and so on. The club cooperates with the German Amateur Radio Club "DARC e.V." and the "Arbeitskreis Amateurfunk in der Schule - AATiS e.V."

ISS Ham Radio Enthusiasts,

I wanted to provide a progress report on the ISS Ham Radio activities. And to address some questions that have come up related to ARISS operations and equipment upgrade and repair.

With the successful Shuttle return to flight, the International Space Station Program construction has moved into high gear with delivery and assembly of new ISS modules. If all goes well, the new European Columbus Module and Japanese Kibo module will be installed on ISS in the next 12 months. This substantial workload on the crew is impacting ARISS operations directly.

The launching of any new or replacement radios or computers has been significantly curtailed due to the extremely limited upmass capability. There are just too many higher priority activities from an international space agency perspective and frankly we are a lower priority. The extra workload on the crew has taken its toll on ARISS - they have had very little extra time for Amateur Radio activities beyond school contacts. This is somewhat frustrating to the general ham radio community and the ARISS International Team, though the team is pleased that the crew has been able to speak so often with youth groups worldwide, piquing their interest in Amateur Radio, science, technology, engineering and math.

An International Space Station Expedition 15 ARISS school contact has been planned with students at Christian Life Elementary School, Rockford, Illinois, USA on 25 April. The event is scheduled to begin at approximately 19:21 UTC.

The contact will be a direct between stations NA1SS and N9SH. The contact should be audible in central and Eastern portions of North America. Interested parties are invited to listen in on the 145.80 MHz downlink. The participants are expected to conduct the conversation in English. Additional listening options are listed below.

Christian Life Schools is a nationally accredited private school that serves Pre-K through 12th grade students and its staff and faculty are certified teachers. The school is located in the northeast side of Rockford, Illinois which is 90 miles west of Chicago. The student body is made up of students from the surrounding Rockford area; as well as, southern Wisconsin families. Students participate in several after school activities such as: Football, Basketball, Track, Baseball, Softball, Scholastic Bowl, Chess Club, Math Olympics, Science Olympiad, Cheerleading, and Student Council. Graduates from Christian Life have moved on to: community colleges, state universities, and the military.

Students from four European schools will have the opportunity to talk with US astronaut Sunita Williams KD5PLB over amateur radio in the next two weeks:

• Monday April 23 at 14:50 UTC : Scuola Europea Varese, located near Milan, Italy

• Saturday April 28 at 14:19 UTC: Samuel-von-Pufendorf Gymnasium, located in Floeha, Germany

• Saturday May 5 at 10:24 UTC: Liceo Scientifico Statale "Lorenzo Respighi", Piacenza, Italy

• Saturday May 5 at 13:34 UTC: Erweiterte Realschule Weiskirchen, Germany.

The school in Varese will benefit from a "telebridge" operated by the Australian ARISS groundstation VK4KHZ.

Five professional astronauts and an American visitor to the International Space Station (ISS) expressed grief Thursday for those killed and wounded during a student gunman'sattack at Virginia Tech this week.

"All of us on the International Space Station are deeply saddened by the tragic news from Virginia Tech University," U.S. space tourist Charles Simonyi, who is due to return to Earth Saturday with the outpost's homecoming crew aboard a Soyuz TMA-9 spacecraft, wrote in his Web site blog. "We may be many miles away physically but our hearts are with the students, their families and university communities everywhere and we are grieved by the lives and contributions that have been cut short. Our thoughts and prayers"