- (29-7-2006)
Greek Minister of
Education and Religion Affairs and Students
having a QSO with the ISS
Saturday 29 July 2006 at 12.27 UTC, ARISS
set up a live space talk for ESA Space Camp
in Patras, Greece with German astronaut
Thomas Reiter, DF4TR presently onboard the
International Space Station.
The radio contact was performed by ARISS
ground station in Sacred Heart’s College,
Honolulu, Hawaii, operated by Nancy
Rocheleau, WH6PN. Signals will be relayed to
Greece by telebridge, courtesy of Verizon
Teleconferencing.
Participating to this ESA organized event
was Mrs Marietta Giannakou, Minister of
National Education and Religious Affairs,
who put the first questions, inviting Thomas
Reiter to address a message to the youth and
to comment experiments presently conducted
onboard the International Space Station.
Thomas said there is so much we can gain for
the benefit of mankind by going to space and
explore other planets. He encouraged young
people to engage in careers related to space
flight. One of his experiments is to study
the behaviour of fluids of different
densities in microgravity.
Answering questions of students, Thomas
insisted on the importance for candidate
astronauts to firstly study hard and acquire
a solid background in sciences such as
biology, physics or medical science. About
space exploration he said we will go back to
the Moon within a few years and possibly to
Mars 25 years from now.
The Patras event was highlighted by Greek
national TV evening news and largely
commented in several newspapers.
The ARISS School Contact was also
distributed on EchoLink and IRLP.
Several hams around the world offered their
time an efforts to this educational event:
Thomas Reiter, DF4TR, ISS [12] Astronaut
Nancy Rocheleau, WH6PN, Honolulu, Hawaii [2]
Operator
Tim Bosma, W6MU, Santa Rosa, California [5]
Backup
John Nickel, WD5EEV, Winfield, Kansas [7]
Coordinator
Will Marchant, KC6ROL, Berkeley, Californa
[5] Moderator
Kenneth Ransom, N5VHO, Houston [7] NASA
Sergey Samburov, RV3DR, Korolev [16] Enrgia
Dieter Schliemann, KX4Y, Scottsboro, Alabama
[7] EchoLink
Graham Lawton, G7EVY, UK [13] EchoLink
Satoshi Yasuda, JK1ZRW, Japan [19] Echolink
Wayne Harasimovitch, VE1WPH , Halifax,
Canada [9] IRLP
Manos Darkadakis, SV1IW, Patras [15]
Telebridge
Gaston Bertels, ON4WF, Brussels Patras [15]
Telebridge
The numbers in brackets are the local times
for each of the participants during the
event. A great “Thank you” to everyone!
An audio recording and pictures will be
available on www.ariss-eu.org/archive.htm
ARISS, Amateur Radio on the International
Space Station, an international working
group of several amateur radio societies
from countries participating to the ISS,
provides a free educational outreach
programme in collaboration with the Space
Agencies, involving a team of volunteering
amateur radio operators.
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