ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli, IZ0JPA

Double Italian school contact successful

On Monday October 29th 2007 at 08:23 UTC, (09:23 local time), the IIS Deambrosis-Natta school, located in Sestri Levante, near Genoa and the Engineering Faculty of the University of L’Aquila, established a radio contact with ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli, IZ0JPA, onboard the International Space Station.
A second contact between the schools and Nespoli took place during the following pass, at 09:59 UTC.

The IIS Deambrosis-Natta school is located in Sestri Levante, near Genoa. The school counts 900 students and 140 teachers. Deambrosis-Natta is a high school specializing in scientific and technological subjects. Students can choose among several courses: mechanical, electronics, electro-technological focusing on automation. It also specializes in telecommunications. The school is a member of the national network "Radio at school" and "Radio transmission experiments for educational purposes".

The Engineering Faculty of the University of L’Aquila was founded in 1964 and now offers 10 different undergraduate programs at the level of Bachelor of Science in Engineering, 12 graduate programs at the level of Master of Engineering, one single-stage program, and a number of advanced graduate courses leading to the degree of a PhD.In the field of Information Engineering there are specific programs in Electronics, Telecommunications, Automation and Computer Science.

The faculty is located on the hill-top of Roio a few km from the city of L’Aquila. Presently there are 5000 students enrolled, who reach a high level of preparation through the coordinated action of 164 faculty teachers.

Alessandro Iscra, IK1WKR was the contact coordinator for this ISS contact in Sestri Levante. Piero Tognolatti, I0KPT was the contact coordinator for the ISS contact in L’Aquila.

The operator of the contact was ARISS mentor Francesco De Paolis, IK0WGF. The questions were read by the students. The audience in the shack room was about 200 persons in Sestri Levante and more than 350 students, guests and media operators in L’Aquila. In Sestri Levante were present ESA Educational and ASI representatives.

At 08:23 UTC contact with IZ0JPA was established and Paolo Nespoli first introduced Pamela A. Melroy, STS 120 Commander, who sent greetings to the students, and then answered 3 questions.

At 09:59 UTC a second contact with IZ0JPA was established and Paolo Nespoli answered 10 more questions. The signals and audio from the ISS were excellent.

Many TV stations, radio stations and newspapers covered the event.

Congratulations to the ARISS team in Sestri Levante and L’Aquila!

Pictures and audio files will be appended to the archived Bulletin on www.ariss-eu.org/archive.htm

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Francesco De Paolis, IKØWGF
ARISS mentor