We'll take satellite technology for the sheer fun of it! Let's do things backwards -- retrograde, as they say down at Kennedy Space Center -- as the questions become the answers. Or are they still questions and the answers are the questions? Confounding, isn't it? Not as confounding as the quiz, though. Ready? 10, 9, 8...

1. Perigee
a) Closest approach of a satellite to Earth
b) Farthest distance of a satellite from Earth
c) Average distance of a satellite from Earth
d) A failed launch

2. Mode
a) Orientation of orbit with respect to Earth's orbit
b) Angle between the satellite and the Sun

An International Space Station Expedition 18 ARISS school contact has been planned with participants at the Ecole & Collège Jean XXIII, Pamiers, France on 30 January. The event is scheduled to begin at approximately 1313 UTC.

The contact will be a direct between stations NA1SS and F0CUQ. The contact should be audible over 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.

We are students of year 7, we are between 10 and 12 years old and our high school is called Jean XXIII, which is the name of the famous Pope from 1960. Our school is situated in Pamiers, in the department of the Ariège, at the foot of the Pyrenees, in the south-west of France. Pamiers counts around 15,000 inhabitants: it's the home town of the musician Gabriel FAURE. Our school has around 220 children in the primary school and 300 in the secondary school. Our school has two extra-curricular options : one's a football team and the other provides training as a fireman.

NASA and the city of Titusville will pay tribute this week to American astronauts who lost their lives in the line of duty.

With the anniversaries of the 1967 Apollo 1 launch pad fire, the 1986 Challenger explosion and the 2003 Columbia accident all in the next eight days, NASA will stage a Day of Remembrance ceremony on Thursday at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.

KSC Director Robert Cabana, a former astronaut, will lay a wreath at the base of the Space Mirror Memorial at 9:30 a.m. Thursday.

"It honors all those who have died in the pursuit of space exploration and discovery," said KSC spokesman Allard Beutel.

An International Space Station Expedition 18 ARISS school contact has been planned with participants at the CERAM EAI RUE Albert Einstein Sophia Antipolis, France on 29 January. The event is scheduled to begin at approximately 1459 UTC.

The contact will be a telebridge between stations NA1SS and VK4KHZ. The contact should be audible over most of eastern Australia. Interested parties are invited to listen in on the 145.80 MHz downlink. Audio from the contact should also be available via the AMSAT conference on EchoLink and via the 9010 Discovery reflector on IRLP. The participants are expected to conduct the conversation in English.

Topics in this report
1. Upcoming School Contacts
2. Children's Hospital Contact Successful
3. Astronaut Training Status
4. General Voice Contacts
5. ARRL QST Covers ARISS News

1. Upcoming School Contacts
An Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) contact has been scheduled for Castor Valley Elementary School in Greely, Ontario, Canada on Tuesday, January 27 at 19:33 UTC. A space club at the school has been formed for grades 1-8. Students from this group will ask questions of the astronaut. Students have learned about the ISS via the internet and videos and through guest speakers. They have been taught the correct radio protocol and have tracked and plotted the course of the ISS. All classes have taken part in space projects and activities. Media, members of the community, the school board and other dignitaries have been invited to attend.

The first wave of an astronaut team set to double the International Space Station's population later this year is gearing up for what promises to be a busy mission aboard the orbiting laboratory.

Commanded by veteran Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, the space station's three-man Expedition 19 crew is training for a planned March 25 launch that will ultimate be followed by another three-astronaut team to bring the orbital lab up to a six-person crew in May.

"Doubling your crew size means a lot," said NASA astronaut Michael Barratt, who forms the core of the joint Expedition 19/20 crew with Padalka, in a Friday briefing. "Certainly, onboard it means there'll be a lot of people in line for a small number of bathrooms, for the exercise equipment, for the galley table. Everything that, essentially, provides support for the crew, we're going to stretch those resources quite a bit."

NASA is a step closer to the first flight test of the rocket that will send humans on their way to the moon as part of the agency's Constellation Program. Rocket hardware critical for the test, known as Ares I-X, was completed this week at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. The flight of Ares I-X will be an important step toward verifying analysis tools and techniques needed to develop Ares I, NASA's next crew launch vehicle.

The Langley-designed and built hardware is engineered to represent the Orion crew module and a launch abort system that increases crew safety. In late January, the rocket elements will be shipped from Langley to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This hardware and other elements from around the country will be integrated into the Ares I-X rocket, the first in a series of unpiloted test vehicles.

NASA astronauts of the STS-126 space shuttle mission will begin a new journey next week -- an 11-day trip to greet U.S. military personnel serving overseas. Shuttle Endeavour's crew will pay a special visit to troops in Germany and the Middle East from Jan. 26 to Feb. 5.

The trip is sponsored by Armed Forces Entertainment, the lead Department of Defense agency for providing entertainment to U.S. military personnel serving overseas. The shuttle crew members visiting the troops are Navy Capt. Chris Ferguson, who commanded the flight, Air Force Col. Eric Boe, who served as the pilot, and Mission Specialists Donald Pettit, Navy Capt. Steve Bowen, Navy Capt. Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper and Army Lt. Col. Shane Kimbrough.

Expedition 18 Commander Mike Fincke, aboard the International Space Station with Flight Engineers Sandy Magnus and Yury Lonchakov, recently filmed a high-definition tour of the orbiting complex. The 35-minute tour will air as a special Video File on NASA Television's HD Channel 105 at 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. CST Thursday and Friday.

The special Video File also will be broadcast in standard-definition on NASA TV immediately following the regularly scheduled daily Video File broadcasts. For technical information on how to receive the special broadcast in high definition, and for NASA TV streaming video, downlink and scheduling information, visit:

The first American to command five space missions, the first commander of the International Space Station (ISS) and a member of the first repair team to service a satellite on-orbit will be enshrined this May in the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame.

James Wetherbee, William Shepherd and George "Pinky" Nelson were confirmed on Wednesday by the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation as comprising the eighth group of space shuttle astronauts to be named to the Hall. A gala and an induction ceremony will be hosted at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida, home to the Hall of Fame, on May 1-2, 2009.