Russian space suit to carry ham tribute

A tribute to ham radio space efforts will be carried into Earth orbit in a Russian space suite to be ejected from the International Space Station. And you are being invited to be a part of this very special project. Frank Bauer, KA3HDO, of the ARISS team explains:

Bauer: "In the fall of this year, the Russian team is going to be deploying a space suit that they do not need anymore and they have asked us - and we have gotten permission this past week from NASA - to put some Amateur Radio equipment onto it. So there will be some Amateur Radio downlink capability and slow scan pictures will be downlinked."

ARISS is still working out the technical details as to what gear and capability will be put into the orbital mini space station, but one thing has already been decided. That being to honor the educational aspect of ham radio in space:

Bauer: "Another unique and exciting opportunity is for schools to participate in the spacewalk. And the way they would participate is by generating a depiction of the school, or artwork, or school students signatures and we will scan that in - or we will take a picture of whatever artwork they have or send us a .jpg image and we will put that on a DVD and that will be put inside the suit and flown in a spacewalk environment."

But says KA3HDO, getting the school artwork is time critical:
Bauer: "We have got to deliver this by June 15th, so they have a couple of weeks to pull it off and we have got a "snail mail address" as well as an e-mail address that they can send information directly to us and we can get it on board."

Bauer says that a jpg file attached to a note is really the best way for a school to send the artwork that they want flown in space. There is a special e-mail address set up to handle submissions. That e-mail is schoolspacewalk@comcast.net The jpg image should at least include the schools name and its location.

Source: ARISS

Other recent stories..

Other News Stories

• Get our news headlines for your website - click here
• Submit your news story - click here