Cosmic conversations

ABC Radio National has broadcast an interview with Maggie Iaquinto VK3CFI about the opera called 'Cosmonaut' which has a real-life likeness to her activities in communicating with the MIR space station.

The opera is a story about cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev U5MIR, who was orbiting the earth in MIR when his home-land the Soviet Union was falling apart.

Listeners to the ABC program Verbatim on Saturday 29 January, heard how Krikalev, during this momentous period, kept himself sane by chatting to a housewife at Colac in western Victoria. Maggie is now a senior Information
Technology Teacher in Melbourne.

The interviewed also detailed how over a period of five years she spoke to 19 cosmonauts on ham radio and made history in 1991 by establishing the first computer-to-computer civilian communication with a space station.

Her activities were recognised by the prestigious Wireless Institute of Australia's Ron Wilkinson Achievement Award. The MIR space station ceased to exist when it was deliberated plunged into earth's atmosphere to burn up
in 2001.

The opera was performed at the Melbourne Festival last year, and now billed as a 'dance opera in four orbits' that will be broadcast on the ABC's Classic FM network program 'In Performance' on 18 April at 8pm.

Jim Linton VK3PC

Source: Wireless Institute of Australia

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