ARISS-Europe Chairman Gaston Bertels, ON4WF has drafted an overview of a new 'Ham Video' DATV downlink system on S-Band being developed for placement on the International Space Station later this year.

If you haven't heard NASA has announced that Scott Kelly will be at the international space station for an entire year this will be the longest mission to the ISS that has ever happened the mission will start in April of 2015 and end in April 2016 the point of this mission is to see how humans can live in space for a year the prepare humans for the journey to mars

The ARRL reports that NASA will televise the launch and docking of
its next mission to the International Space Station (ISS) beginning at 1930 UT on Thursday, March 28

At approximately 9:45 AM EST (1445 UTC) on Tuesday, February 19, the International Space Station (ISS) experienced a loss of communication with the ground. At that time, flight controllers in Houston were updating the software onboard the ISS’s flight computers when one of the ISS’s data relay systems malfunctioned. The primary computer that controls critical station functions defaulted to a backup computer, but it did not allow the ISS to communicate with NASA’s tracking and data relay satellites.

An International Space Station school contact has been planned with participants at Breadalbane Academy, Aberfeldy, United Kingdom on 12 February.

After experiencing issues with the Kenwood D700 on two consecutive
school contacts, ARISS will use the Ericsson radio on the Columbus
module for ARISS contacts until problems with the D700 are resolved.

Here are the times that you can expect to hear the SpEx Shadow beacon from the ISS over Australia. The Space Station is only visible for a little over 10 minutes as it travels over your location. If you are tuned into 145.825 with a packet radio decoder 1200 baud, you should be able to decode some signals that will translate into some text similar to this sample from a previous test over Europe.

G4HYG>BEACON,RS0ISS-4* :SpEx SHADOW 20:35:39 *GB* 13-10-2012/
G4HYG>BEACON,RS0ISS-4* :SpEx SHADOW 20:35:54 *GB* 13-10-2012/

The Loyalist City Amateur Radio Club (VE9LC) in Saint John NB Canada will host an ARISS contact with Colonel Chris Hadfield.

The contact is confirmed for Thursday January 17th 2013 at 13:40 Z.

The webcast will start at 12:00 Z, with the formal presentation beginning at 13:00 Z, and the contact at 13:40 Z.

The URL for the contact is http://live.streamit.ca/?player=66 .

This same URL will also contain the archived version of the contact, for those not able to view the event as it is occurring.

For more information, please see http://www.lcarc.ca .

Regards,

Greg VE9GFI

ISS Commander Sunita Williams KD5PLB made this video about the space station before she returned to Earth

Watch Departing Space Station Commander Provides Tour of Orbital Laboratory

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=doN4t5NKW-k

http://www.southgatearc.org/news/january2013/sunita_williams_kd5plb_tour...

An Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) school contact has been planned with participants at Royal Canadian Air Cadets- Newfoundland Cadet Detachment, St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada on 12 January.