NOTES ON CANADA ACTIVITIES:



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2014

ARISS-International

PR Committee

Report

David Jordan, AA4KN

ARISS PR

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The purpose of this report is to cover public relations (PR) information as it relates to the operation of ARISS-International activities occurring since the last ESTEC meeting held in Houston, Texas in 2011 to the present.

D. Jordan

ARISS PR Committee Member

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ARISS PR from Canada - 2011 through 2013

A number of publications and other materials were generated in Canada to promote interest in the ARISS program over the last three years. Several of these are listed below and some shown on the following page.

Paving The Way To The Stars

- Maurice Andre’ Vigneault, VE3VIG

The Canadian Amateur - Canada’s Amateur Radio Magazine - Nov/Dec 2011

Featuring ARISSat-1

Quebec Youth Masters ISS Contact

- Maurice Andre’ Vigneault, VE3VIG

The Canadian Amateur - Canada’s Amateur Radio Magazine - Jan/Feb 2012

Featuring Vanessa Leblond-Drolet, a 14 year old student who successfully assembled a support team and coordinated an ARISS contact at her school.

Space School Contact Made Easy

- Maurice Andre’ Vigneault, VE3VIG

The Canadian Amateur - Canada’s Amateur Radio Magazine - Mar/Apr 2012

Discusses the ARISS Program and how to get information to host an ARISS contact

at a school.

New Game For Amateur Radio In Space

- Maurice Andre’ Vigneault, VE3VIG

The Canadian Amateur - Canada’s Amateur Radio Magazine - May/June 2013

A discussion on how amateur radio moves into a “new phase” of supporting STEM

education through ham radio experimentation in the classroom.

International Space Station Commander Chris Hadfield Covers Canada

- Maurice Andre’ Vigneault, VE3VIG

The Canadian Amateur - Canada’s Amateur Radio Magazine - Sept/Oct 2013

A two part article about the impact of ISS Commander, Chris Hadfield’s ARISS contacts while on board the International Space Station.

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continued from previous page…

Other Promotional Materials:

Creation of ARISS pamphlets for distribution to teachers and schools to promote interest in hosting ARISS contacts

Creation of ARISS pamphlets for distribution to the general public.

Many pamphlets are continually distributed in bilingual format (English and French) at the Canada Science and Technology Museum which also houses amateur station VE3JW.

Social Media:

The Ottawa Valley Mobile Radio Amateur Club website sponsors a page dedicated to promoting ARISS with sections on Education Outreach, School Selection Committee and a Promotional Package for Teachers and Schools and can be found at .

Thanks to Maurice-Andre’ Vigneault, VE3VIG for materials supporting this report for Canada and for his many years serving as Canadian Delegate for ARISS.

A Sampling of Canadian Publications

supporting ARISS Activities

2011 through 2013

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provided by Maurice-Andre’ Vigneault, VE3VIG for this report

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ARISS PR IN EUROPE

1. March 2007, an Amateur Radio Exhibition was set up in the European Parliament, Brussels, Belgium April 2010 by IARU Region 1

o Among the panels, one was dedicated to Space and ARISS

2. April 2010, an Amateur Radio Exhibition was again set up in the European Parliament

o astronauts Frank De Winne (ESA), Roman Romanenko (Roscosmos) and Robert Thirsk (CSA) visited the exhibition

o 12 students from International School Brussels participated to ARISS radio contact and to astronauts reception in EU Parliament

3. ARISS-Europe chairman is member of the Space working group of the Belgian Senate

4. ARISS activities are organized in Euro Space Center, Belgium, which

o runs a permanent space exhibition

o hosts ON4ESC satellite station

o runs a Space Camp where youngsters from several countries participate to activities comprising ARISS school contacts and terrestrial contacts (astronaut training)

5. Each year in a different country, ESA organizes a Summer Camp for the children of ESA personnel. During the Camp, an ARISS radio contact takes place. ESA astronauts participate to the venue.

6. An ARISS school contact is in the pipeline at 4U1ITU, the club station of the International Telecommunications Union in Geneva. Secretary General ITU and many delegates of ITU Member States will participate (closed circuit TV).

7. All Italian ARISS school contacts are announced on ESA Portal - National News, Italian edition.

continued from previous page…

ESA is commissioning Ham Video, an amateur DATV transmitter, to be used for ARISS school contacts. Ham Video uses the ARISS L/S-band antennas installed on the nadir of Columbus module of the ISS. See Ham TV Bulletins on

ariss-

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ARISS PR in Japan - 2011 through 2013

(compiled by Ken Yakamoto)

ARISS activities in Japan since November 2011

Since November 2011, there were 17 ARISS School Contacts that were planned and all but one event were successful to establish communications between the astronauts on board ISS and boys and girls in Japan through amateur radio. The list is given below.

One failure happened on 17 August 2012 at Meikei Gakuen High School which was the Alma Mater of astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, KE5DNI. However, they had a successful ARISS contact at their second chance on 23 August 2012.

Many of the school contacts were reported on TV news, FM radio and newspapers. One extraordinary case, the school contact held at Yokosuka Elementary School in Aichi prefecture was taken up by KBS (Korean Broadcasting System) TV crew as a topic in their special programme “inevitable radio wave in human life”. One school contact is introduced on You Tube. )

At a number of elementary schools, boys and girls could ask their questions to astronaut in English as a result of careful preparation assisted by Auxiliary English teachers.

|Dy/Mo/Yr |Facility |Call Sign |Astronaut |

|12/12/2012 |Hirano Elementary School (Hyogo) |8J3H |Daniel C. Burbank |

| | | |(KC5ZSX) |

|11/02/2012 |Kusamuta Elementary School (Kagoshima) |8J6SMT | |

|13/02/2012 |Kochi Gakuen Kochi Middle School (Kochi) |8N5KOCHI |Andre Kuipers (PI9ISS) |

|14/04/2012 |Boyscout Iruma Amateur Radio Club (Saitama) |8N1BSI |Daniel C. Burbank |

| | | |(KC5ZSX) |

|08/06/2012 |Higashi Middle School (Osaka) |8N3KN |Andre Kuipers (PI9ISS) |

|16/08/2012 |Wada Elementary School (Nagano) |8N0WADA | |

| | | | |

| | | | |

| | | |Akihiko Hoside |

| | | |(KE5DNI) |

|17/08/2012 (Failure) |Meikei Gakuen High School Amateur Radio Club (Ibaraki) |JJ1YAF | |

|26/08/2012 |Wakayama University, Institute for Education on Space (Wakayama) |8N3IFES | |

|02/09/2012 |Iruma Junior Ham Club (Saitama) |JK1ZAM | |

|23/10/2012 |Meikei Gakuen High School Amateur Radio Club (Ibaraki) |JJ1YAF | |

|09/02/2013 |Yokosuka Elementary School (Aichi) |8N2TOKAI |Thomas H. Marshburn |

| | | |(KE5HOC) |

|12/12/2013 |Rakuyo Technical High School (Kyoto) |8N3LR | |

| | | | |

| | | |Koichi Wakata |

| | | |(KC5ZTA) |

|14/12/2013 |Tochigi Science Lion Project (Tochigi) |8N1ISS | |

|29/12/2013 |Ritsumeikan Moriyama Middle School (Shiga) |8N3RM | |

|08/02/2014 |Daiichi Middle School (Osaka) |8N3T | |

|09/02/2014 |Chuo Elementary School (Aichi) |8N2TCES | |

|01/03/2014 |Musashino Elementary School (Tokyo) |8N1MA | |

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ARISS PR from Russia - 2011 through 2013

ARISSat-1/KEDR project

One of the more significant events since the last ARISS-International face-to-face meeting is the mission of ARISSat-1. First conceived as Suitsat-2 where an amateur radio station would be configured for orbit in a retired Russian spacesuit, but then was reconfigured by AMSAT volunteers into a suitcase-sized housing, ARISSat-1/Kedr proved to be very successful in its mission both technically and through its educational aspects, bringing space science directly into classroom environments. In addition, it provided several opportunities for promoting public awareness by encouraging student interest in space technology.

▪ Many students loaded documentation of their favorite science projects onto a memory chip and through the “fly a file” program, the chip was attached to the spacecraft, carrying their files along for the ride.

37 entries were flown.

▪ Students from around the world were also encouraged to submit voice messages to be broadcast at intervals during ARISSat-1’s transmission sequence. A total of 26 messages were submitted and flown.

▪ Included in the activities to engage student participation were the CW, Telemetry and SSTV signal contests where listeners were asked to submit received data and be rewarded with a certificate.

▪ University of Kursk student experiment was flown yielding telemetry data on the Earth’s atmosphere.

SSTV Transmissions from the ISS

Over the past several years, Energia has carried out SSTV transmission tests

on board the ISS.

Within the month of March 2014, Energia scheduled contacts between the

ISS and various institutions in Russia. It was reported that out of 12 events, all

were successful except for 2.

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ARISS PR in U.S. - 2011 through 2013

Notable Activities

▪ Frank Bauer discusses the ARISS Program with correspondent over NASA TV from Mission Control Houston during 2013 AMSAT Space Symposium in Houston, Texas.

▪ On Oct. 30, 2012, the South Florida Science Museum in West Palm Beach, FL hosted a direct ARISS contact for local students. Through various media options, this was made available to all schools within the Palm Beach Co. school district. A group of 290 students were on hand at the museum contact site. An estimated 185,000 students viewed by a district-wide video link. In addition, an audience of 65,000 of the general public were estimated to have view the contact via live streaming, the local Educational Network channel and three local cable channels resulting in a total count of 250,000 viewers.

Veteran astronaut, Scott Carpenter was on hand for the contact.

To view contact, go to watch?v=VvcGLKSvBnQ

Article covering the ARISSat-1/Kedr project makes the front cover of

ARRL QST Magazine Feb. 2011 issue

ARISS PR at notable hamfests:

▪ Dayton Hamvention: Between 2011 and 2013, attendance has Dayton, Ohio been on the increase, now approaching 2002 levels around 24,500 for the three day event. Much of the interest at the AMSAT area centers around ARISS.

Much of the information given at the

AMSAT forum is covering ARISS

activities.



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continued from previous page…

▪ Orlando Hamcation: The hamfest occurs in February with Orlando, Florida attendance around 12,000 for the weekend. ARISS is always a major topic with visitors at the AMSAT booth.



▪ Pacificon: This hamfest usually has a crowd of about Santa Clara, CA 2500 for the weekend. The gathering was host to an ARISS contact in 2012.



The following report was submitted by Joe Spier, K6WAO,

An Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) contact was held with youth attending the American Radio Relay League (ARRL) Pacific Division annual convention, PACIFICON in Santa Clara, California on Saturday, October 13, 2012.

Telebridge station IK1SLD in Italy provided the radio connection. ARISS Moderator was Tony Hutchison, VK5ZAI.

Astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, KE5DNI, on the ISS participated in the contact which was the featured event of the PACIFICON Youth Program that emphasized hands-on radio operation, electronics kit building, orbital mathematics and CubeSat satellite design, among other STEM activities.

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Fellow astronaut Dr. Lee Morin, KF5DDB gave a presentation at the event and exchanged greetings with Hoshide at the end of the ISS pass. An audience of approximately 150 was present for the contact; 2500 attended the convention.

All 18 student questions were answered and there was a short interaction between Dr. Lee Morin & Aki. Later, all participants received an ARISS QSL card from the ARRL.

Media Hits

San Jose Mercury News (10/14/2012 article now on archive site - fee $2.95)

ARRL News (Webpage)



AMSAT News Service

HamNation-Episode 69

PACIFICON 2012 website



QST Article, Dec2012, Vol. 96 Issue 12, p61

-Joe Spier, K6WAO

k6wao@

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General Information relating to US ARISS PR

ARISS contact-related items

For U.S. operations, once the contact date and time option for an institution has been determined, Debra Johnson, K1DMJ, ARRL Education Services Manager, will notify the correct ARRL Region Director and Vice-Director, that a contact is scheduled in their region.

ARRL’s journal, QST, and its web site often cover ARISS items and will present very nice articles about ARISS educational outcomes.

PR suggestions for ARISS Mentors:

▪ Encourage schools to arrange for onsite local TV/Radio/Newspaper coverage once the contact option has been chosen.

▪ Suggest that the school involve their students in creating special social media sites, promoting their upcoming contact well in advance of the contact week.

▪ It’s important that the school produce contact announcements for county and region-wide school publications and ensure the offices of government officials are informed of the contact date and time and invited to attend.

▪ If possible the school, through their A/V department, should arrange for live video and audio streaming of the contact to be broadcast throughout the school classrooms, to other schools in their district and to the internet.

The ARISS POC for advice in these matters is John Spasojevich, AG9D.

His email address is johnag9d@ .

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AMSAT

AMSAT is a large contributor of ARISS PR. ARISS activities are always mentioned by AMSAT President, Barry Baines in the AMSAT Journal Apogee editorial section and articles on ARISS operations are frequently covered in the issues.

As covered in the Internet and Social Media section of this report, several AMSAT

email lists along with the AMSAT News Service (ANS) cover ARISS updates.

The AMSAT-sponsored Bulletin Board at (amsat-bb@) serves to inform subscribers on the latest news for both AMSAT and ARISS operations.

Several controlled AMSAT nets operate on various ham bands as forums for information among hams with an interest in amateur satellites and ARISS operations. Two of the more popular ones are the Houston AMSAT Net () and the AMSAT HF Net (amsat-new/information/nets.php) .

Status of the telebridge Echolink operation and the IRLP Reflector 9010 Discovery

are covered in the following report from John Spasojevich, AG9D

ECHOLINK/IRLP / WEBSTREAM REPORT for 2013

(compiled by John Spasojevich, AG9D)

In 2013 98% of all telebridge contacts were carried live over ECHOLINK; IRLP (when available) and streaming on the web (either by AG9D or independently by the school) and two direct contacts asked for streaming service. The totals by country (country being defined by call signs on Echolink or Node Location on IRLP) are noted below. For web streams we can only tally the number listening as we cannot determine where the listener is located. In addition on echolink we can tally the number of repeaters and links connected however we do not know how many people may be listening, likewise we do not know how many are listening to a connected IRLP node, therefore these numbers are in all likelihood significantly larger than reported.

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ECHOLINK: no. of connects

USA 166

JAPAN 36

ENGLAND 23

AUSTRALIA 20

CHINA 18

ITALY 17

POLAND 15

GERMANY 11

BELGIUM 9

ARGENTINA 7

TAIWAN 5

CANADA 4

IRELAND 4

BRAZIL 3

SPAIN 3

NETHERLANDS 2

RUSSIA 2

SWITZERLAND 2

BANGLEDESH 1

ECUADOR 1

GURNSY ISLAND 1

MALTA 1

SCOTLAND 1

SOUTH AFRICA 1

SRI LANKA 1

THAILAND 1

TRINIDAD &

TOBAGO 1

TOTAL ECHOLINK 356 Listeners

IRLP 28 Listeners

LINKS/REPEATERS 60 Connected Devices

AG9D WEBSTREAM 50 Listeners

INDEPENDENT STREAMS 222 Listeners

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NOTES:

Echolink operation remains virtually unchanged since it was started back in the early 2000’s by Dieter (SK). IRLP carried on the 9010 Discovery Reflector was originally handled by the Canadian Team (Luc LeBlanc). When Dieter passed, Graham Lawton, G7EVY who was working with Dieter took over the audio team. Soon after this the Canadian Team stopped handling IRLP. Shortly after this I began assisting Graham with Echolink. When Graham took ill I was appointed as the team leader by Gaston to include efforts to renew IRLP coverage based on my experience with IRLP nodes and system set up. I also own a local node so it was easy for me to get into the system. IRLP audio is fed by RF link while Echolink is fed via phone/internet. The IRLP audience is virtually nonexistent due to the one year lap in coverage but is beginning to come back.

There is an issue with 9010 which is that from time to time if a station is on the node, it locks out all other stations from transmitting so if there is a station there before I get there, I can’t send any audio. I spoke with Wayne and he suggested I contact the node owner to resolve. The node owner typically takes a week to respond and suggested that I contact him in advance of each contact. That’s not a workable solution as conditions can change over the intervening time from when we talk to contact day.

The 9010 Node also has a companion website which originally provided the live audio from the reflector to the internet. I was never given any information about how to operate that portion of the node so for the last three to four years there has been nothing carried live on the web side of the reflector. Further archiving of the audio files was handled by someone in Canada. I have been told several times how to contact the gentleman, who never responds or that someone would contact him and ask him to contact me. As a result I have all the contacts I have done, plus Grahams previous contacts stored on thumb drives and in the Cloud.

An additional problem with the web portion of 9010 is that it requires the user to download Shout cast into their local computer before they can listen to any audio, live or recorded. American schools, at least the ones I have worked with cannot download software into school computers and teachers laptops, if allowed to connect to the school internet will not be able to download due to firewalls. Through request of local teacher friends who wanted to hear contacts in the classroom I investigated software which would allow me to stream and the end user to listen without any downloads, through 99% of firewalls. I found software which does it and built a server to do it.

It’s called the AG9D web stream for lack of a better term and utilizes a Google Site website as the interface. The end user goes to the Google Site and clicks on the live audio link and it will play in Windows, Mac, iOS and Android. It allows a user to listen while mobile or stationary.

The other difficulty is that I have no way of monitoring my RF signal OUT of 9010. I can monitor it going IN but have to ask local ham friends to listen and let me know how the audio levels are which is problematic at 2AM.

On Echolink we used to tie in the JK1ZRW server in Japan to ease the load on the AMSAT server, that node is no longer in operation, I have no idea who operated it or who to contact, there was no information about it included in the info sent to me when I took over.

The future outlook on Echolink remains good. The number of listeners varies by day and time of the week more than anything else. We have many regular listeners and several are school classrooms and amateur repeaters at schools and universities. IRLP is a question because of the sometimes sporadic condition of the RF side of 9010 plus my inability to monitor the outbound signal, my audio might be too low or it might be too high. Unless I have someone monitoring, I have no way of knowing. The web side of 9010 is nonexistent as I have no information on how to operate it and no one has volunteered to do it. Further its requirement to download software makes it questionable for use in school computers, at least in America.

My web stream is serving a small audience and I have only recently included its information in the announcements of coverage, I anticipate it will grow.

Local schools also stream from time to time as does AMSAT-IT and those can have large audiences but as the number of listeners go up, quality can go down based on the internet pipeline and server capacity.

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Other notes

▪ The website has undergone modification and is now completely updated. This work was undertaken by the ARRL. ARISS would like to thank the ARRL staff for volunteering their time and for the notable improvements in the design and functionality of the site.

▪ School contacts continue to be publicized by ARISS through press releases that are sent by email 2 to 3 days prior to the scheduled contact date. The releases are posted on the SAREX email list (sarex@), the ARISS press email list (ariss-press@ and at the ariss-I list (ariss-i@). In addition, a brief notice is also sent via the ARISS Twitter account (@ARISS_status) and also posted at the ARISS Facebook Page - Amateur Radio on the ISS (ARISS).

Recommendations

▪ I recommend that an ongoing, coordinated and concentrated effort be made to identify internet news services, blogs, social media platforms that apply to our mission and would be receptive to posting ARISS press releases.

▪ I recommend a focus be placed on identifying STEM-related periodicals that target the teaching community and would be receptive to posting articles on ARISS contact events.

▪ Request that ARISS contact information be included in the email list postings sent by NEON (NASA Educator’s Online Network).

▪ Decide if ARISS should pursue holding a presentation or exhibit at National Science Teacher Association Annual STEM Forum & Expo.

[pic] ARISS PR OUTREACH

THROUGH INTERNET SITES AND SOCIAL MEDIA

(Known internet distribution carriers of ARISS information)

Websites:

ARISS website

ariss- ARISS-Europe website

ovmrc.on.ca/ariss.htm Ottawa Valley Mobile Radio Club

ARISS Page

iaru- IARU website pages sponsoring

the Amateur Radio Space Exploration group, covering

ARISS activity in Region 1

source for ISS and ARISS

information

NOTE: These are all of the specific ARISS-related websites that I am currently aware of at this time. Please notify me of any sites I may have missed so they can be included in future PR Committee reports. My contact email is aa4kn@.

ARISS Social Media

ARISS Twitter account: * @ARISS_status posting current and

upcoming activities

and contacts.

ARISS facebook account:** Amateur Radio on posting upcoming

the ISS (ARISS) ARISS contact

information and

other related material

ISS HAM Twitter account: @RF2Space posting upcoming

ARISS contact

information and

other related material

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EMAIL Lists: ***

sarex@ all 4 lists post ARISS

pre-contact PR

releases and upcoming contact schedules

ariss-press@

ariss-i@

amsat-edu@

News Services: **** AMSAT News Service (ANS) A weekly emailed review of amateur satellite, ARISS & related news.

For certain events, such as during the ARISSat-1/Kedr project, ARISS News Releases are created and sent to news services & other ham and space-related distributors.

* Twitter acct.: After reviewing all 2573 followers as of 3-13-2014, I concluded that 73 are providing news service while others vary from individual ham operators, SWLs, teachers, three AMSAT organizations, general space enthusiasts, chat forum managers (example: Zeke Carr @hamchatforum) etc.

** Facebook acct.: The ARISS Facebook Page as of 3-13-2014, has 1160 likes. The average number of visitors viewing a school contact posting stands at 50.

*** Subscribe to receive the SAREX email list at under the Services pulldown menu.

**** Subscribe to receive the ANS at under the Services pulldown menu.

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