Following its launch at 11:34:04 a.m. CDT, the European Space Agency’s Automated Transfer Vehicle-3 (ATV-3) “Edoardo Amaldi” has reached its planned orbit and deployed its solar arrays.

The unmanned cargo spacecraft is scheduled to dock to the International Space Station at 5:32 p.m. on Wednesday, March 28, delivering 220 pounds of oxygen, 628 pounds of water, 4.5 tons of propellant, and nearly 2.5 tons of dry cargo, including experiment hardware, spare parts, food, and clothing.

Topics in this report:
1. Upcoming School Contact
2. Swiss Contact Successful
3. North Carolina Students Radio ISS
4. ARISS International Team Meeting Held
5. AMSAT News Service on ARISS Mentors

1. Upcoming School Contact

Topics in this report:
1. Upcoming School Contacts
2. Liberty Junior High Radios Don Pettit on ISS
3. Belgium Contact Successful
4. Leone Acciaiuoli Students Question ISS Astronaut
5. ARISS-U.S. Schools Selected

1. Upcoming School Contacts

W5LFL and W5KWQ - Man On A Mission - the movie

We travel back in time to 1983. That's when then NASA astronaut and ham operator Owen Garriott, W5LFL, made the first manned amateur radio transmission from space. His pioneering effort from flight STS-9 paved the way for today's International Space Station ARISS program.

Several decades later, Owen's son Richard, W5KWQ, would fly to the ISS and use the same method to talk to his dad and many others here on planet Earth.

Topics in this report:
1. Upcoming School Contacts
2. ESA Awards ARISS Contact to Winners of Competition
3. Atlanta, Georgia Youth Radio ISS Astronaut
4. Pettit Chats with Greek Students via ARISS
5. Amateur Radio Newsline Covers ARISS

1. Upcoming School Contacts

Lately, the International Space Station has been flying through geomagnetic storms, giving astronauts a close-up view of the aurora borealis just outside their windows.

ISS Flight Engineer 5 Don Pettit shares the experience in a new video from Science@NASA.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WL_-Zz7JDoA

Expedition 30 is the 30th long-duration mission to the International Space Station (ISS).

Commander Dan Burbank, NASA
Flight Engineer 1 Anton Shkaplerov, RSA
Flight Engineer 2 Anatoli Ivanishin, RSA
Flight Engineer 3 Oleg Kononenko,RSA
Flight Engineer 4 André Kuipers, ESA