International Space Station astronaut Jeff Williams, KD5TVQ talked with his nephew Adam back on Earth

Cadet talks to uncle in space

US Air Force Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps (JROTC) cadets at Bob Jones High School in Madison, Alabama, got the first shot at speaking with new ISS crew member Jeff Williams, KD5TVQ.

The Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) program arranged the May 1 contact with NA1SS, which marked the inaugural school QSO of Williams' duty tour as part of Expedition 13.

Posing the first question was Williams' nephew, Adam Williams, who wanted to know if his uncle found it difficult to adapt to living in space.

"It takes a little bit of adaptation to get used to living in space, no matter times you've been here, but after you've been here the first time, you know what to expect, so it's a lot easier to adapt," Williams told his nephew. "It still takes a little bit of time to adapt to the weightless environment and to know your way around--in this case, in a new spacecraft, the space station."

Williams flew aboard the shuttle Atlantis in May 2000 on a 10-day space station assembly mission. During that flight, he performed a spacewalk lasting almost seven hours. He told the Bob Jones students that he's already looking forward to his next spacewalk, set for later in his mission. As
opposed to the initial jolt of a shuttle launch, Williams told the cadets, the Russian Soyuz rocket launch is easier the first couple of minutes but gets rougher as it continues its flight into space.

Williams also described the science experiments he and Expedition 13 Commander Pavel Vinogradov, RV3BS, have under way. "We do a variety of experiments," he explained, adding that some projects deal with fluid dynamics, to help understand how fluids behave in a weightless environment.
In addition, the crew is growing crystals to study materials science, "because crystals will grow more uniformly and precisely in a weightless environment without the force of gravity."

Other research is investigating the effects of weightlessness on the body "so that we understand how to counter the impact on the body for future, long-duration missions--especially to places like Mars or living on the moon for a long period of time," Williams said.

Replying to a later question, Williams said he expects astronauts to again land on the moon, but he added that he doesn't expect that to happen before 2010. "Nothing goes as quick as we want it to, but we will go back to the moon--I'm confident of that."

The school's senior aerospace science instructor, Lt Col Randy Herd (Ret) served as the master of ceremonies for the event as students and other faculty members looked on.

Tony Hutchison, VK5ZAI, served as the Earth station for the event. Verizon Conferencing donated a teleconference link to
provide two-way audio between the school and Hutchison's QTH in Kingston, Australia. The contact, Dieter Schliemann, KX4Y, served as the ARISS mentor for the Bob Jones High School contact, which was the 238th school QSO since the first crew arrived aboard the ISS in 2000.

ARISS is an educational outreach of a nine-nation consortium, with US participation by ARRL, AMSAT and NASA.

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