Nasa astronaut Clay Anderson, KD5PLA

Italian school contact successful

On Tuesday 23 October 2007 at 10:51 UTC, (12:51 local time) the Giosue Carducci school, call sign IZØLRI, in Santa Marinella, Italy, established a radio contact with US astronaut Clay Anderson, KD5PLA, onboard the International Space Station.

The GIOSUE’ CARDUCCI secondary school is located in the town of Santa Marinella, 60 km northwest of Rome. The classes having the ARISS QSO comprise students (boys and girls) aged 12 to 15 years old.

The ARISS activity is well integrated into the school curriculum with the programme called GUGLIELMO MARCONI. This project is about the Research and Experiments conducted by Guglielmo Marconi at the NATIONAL RADIOELECTRIC CENTRE established in the town. Marconi conducted experiments with microwaves, RADAR, Radio Mobile Telephone and the use of the moon as reflector. Marconi bounced off waves from the town to the moon.

Loru Stefano, IØLYO, was the contact coordinator for this ISS contact. The operator of the contact was ARISS mentor Francesco De Paolis. The questions were read by the students. The audience in the shack room was about 265 students, guests and media operators. In addition, the audio was relayed by Skype into EchoLink and IRLP. Thanks to Dieter Schliemann, KX4Y who fed the ARISS contact audio into EchoLink.

At 10:51 UTC contact with NA1SS was established and Clay answered 17 questions. The signal and audio from the ISS was excellent.

Two TV stations, 2 radio stations and all local newspapers covered the event.

Congratulations to the ARISS “Carducci” team!

The audio and pictures of this event will be made available on the ARISS-Europe website Archive page.

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Francesco De Paolis, IKØWGF
ARISS mentor