Astronaut Mike Fincke, Expedition 9 NASA ISS science officer and flight engineer, wearing a Russian Orlan spacesuit, participates in the third of four spacewalks performed by the Expedition 9 crew during their six-month mission. Image credit: NASA

Amateur Radio has a role in five years of ISS habitation

Five years ago last week, the International Space Station Expedition 1 crew of US astronaut and Expedition 1 Commander William 'Shep' Shepherd, KD5GSL, and Russian cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev U5MIR, became the first humans to inhabit the ISS on a long-term basis.

Bill McArthur, KC5ACR, who commands Expedition 12, the current ISS crew increment, took note of the occasion when he spoke with reporters this week.

"We've done things that were just inconceivable 50 years ago," McArthur said. "I think that we have demonstrated that human beings can live and work in space, and, given the will, we can return to the moon not just to visit but to stay there permanently and in not-too-distant future, send people to Mars."

Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for space operations, called the five-year milestone the first leg of a much longer journey "The experiences we're having on station with crews on long-duration missions are teaching us what it will take to send astronauts on longer missions to the moon and into the solar system," he said.

It was on October 31, 2000, that a Russian Soyuz transporter carrying the ISS space pioneers blasted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and docked with the ISS November 2. At the time, Shepherd was only the second US astronaut to go into space aboard a Russian launch vehicle. Krikalev went on to serve as commander of the ISS Expedition 11 crew.

Each of the 12 crews that have lived on the ISS to conduct assembly and research activities has included at least one US radio amateur. McArthur just this week completed the 200th successful Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) school group contact. Crews also have gone on the air to participate in such events as ARRL Field Day and scouting's Jamboree On The Air (JOTA) as well as to make casual QSOs.
The Expedition 12 crew of McArthur and Russian cosmonaut Valery Tokarev will remain on the ISS until next April.

The initial ARISS gear already was aboard the space station by the time the first crew arrived. The Expedition 1 team installed and activated the VHF gear on FM voice and packet under the US call sign NA1SS and the Russian call sign RS0ISS.

In late 2003, the ARISS program attained another milestone with the installation and checkout of the Phase 2 Amateur Radio gear. A Kenwood TM-D700E transceiver is at the heart of the Phase 2 station, located in the ISS Zvezda Service Module--the crew's living quarters. Crew members now routinely use the Phase 2 station to conduct ARISS school group contacts.
ARISS is looking forward to activation of a Yaesu FT-100 HF/VHF/UHF transceiver and a slow-scan television (SSTV) system in the near future.

NASA has been marking the fifth anniversary of continuous ISS human occupancy with special activities and has set up a special Web site
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/5_year_anniversary.html.

The largest and most complex spacecraft ever built, the ISS is the result of a 16-nation partnership led by the US. More ISS information and photos are on NASA's Space Station page.

ARISS is an international educational outreach with US participation by ARRL, AMSAT and NASA.

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