ARISS
Amateur Radio on the International Space Station.
What is the aim of the activity?
The objectives of this activity are to provide a live radio link from the ISS to selected children from Dutch and Belgian schools, to allow them to have the experience of interacting with someone in orbit around the Earth. Students will prepare and put questions to ESA astronaut André Kuipers.
The schools selected are the winners of the Zeg Het ISS competition, which invites schoolchildren to either create a picture of an astronaut in the ISS or write a story about an astronaut in the ISS depending on their age.
Each selected school will receive one live broadcast. Excluding preparation, connection and cut-off time each location will have ten minutes of broadcast time. A selected number children will be ready in each location to put their questions in the presence of many other schoolchildren with parents and authorities in assistance. These questions will be sent by radiogram to the ISS the day before to give the astronaut time to prepare his answers and therefore use the broadcast time as efficiently as possible.
Ground stations will be provided by the members of local amateur radio clubs and ARISS members in the Netherlands. The total time for this activity is approximately 90 minutes. Two weeks before this activity is due to take place, ARISS will provide the text of four messages (one per contact) to be radio-grammed to the astronaut the day before the contact. These messages will include the radio call-sign to be used, the radio frequency, the exact day and time of contact, the text of the twenty questions (in Dutch) and a brief presentation of the school.
Why do it in space?
A key part of education is stimulation and space provides a very stimulating environment for children to learn. Making them an active part in a space mission provides children with first hand information from and about space and creates a lot of excitement and positive associations with space and human spaceflight.
What is it good for?
This exercise serves as an educational tool for making children aware of space, a topic that is often not covered in school syllabuses. It is important to bring space to the children to provide them with a better understanding of the benefits of space and how science in space can also improve life for us here on Earth. Also, space is all around us therefore acquiring knowledge on it can lead to an appreciation of life on our Blue planet.
Team Members:
G. Bertels
ARISS-Europe
Belgium
Tel.: +32 2 771 6774
Fax: +32 2 771 4989
email: gaston.bertels@skynet.be
More Information:
A Fact Sheet of the ARISS experiment is available for download as pdf-file in English and in Dutch.
Watch a presentation of the ARISS experiment in streaming Internet video (in English) made during the weekly Delta mission video debriefing of 27 February 2004.
A summary description of the ARISS experiment in Dutch is available at the ESA Dutch Internet Portal.