ARISS International Teleconference

Tuesday February 20, 2007, 12:15 UTC (7:15 am ET)

Participants:

Frank Bauer

Sergey Samburov

Rosalie White

Mark Steiner

Larry Agabekov

Keigo Komuro

Masanobu Tsuji

Robin Haighton

Daniel Lamoureux

Ken Nichols

Gaston Bertels

Lou McFadin

Keith Pugh

Carlos Eavis

Carol Jackson

Kenneth Ransom

Interpreter, Olga Frumkin

Unable to Attend:

Tadeu Fernandes

Ken Pulfer

Not present:

Dave Larsen

Graham Shirville

Miles Mann

Bill Boston

Matt Keil

ARISS I Agenda:

Administrative Session

1. New Business (administrative only)

None

General Session

2. Charles Simonyi Flight Planning Status, Presenters: S. Samburov, K. Ransom

Frank – Charles’ flight will be the April taxi flight. Sergey noted that he will be providing hands-on training to Charles, KE7KDP, on Wednesday, February 21, 2007, but he is confident that Charles will be a capable operator as he has a great deal of experience in this arena. It is anticipated that Charles will re-program the Kenwood D700 and get us back to nominal operations with it. Sergey asked for Charles’ school requests, and Frank promised to send them to Sergey as soon as they are all worked out. Sergey will try to find out which day the reprogramming will occur and let the ARISS team know. Sergey asked what Bill McArthur’s QSL count was, and Kenneth said around 1800.

3. SuitSat-1 Certificates, Presenter: F. Bauer

Sergey said that the Russian team is overall very happy with it, with only a few minor suggestions that he will get back to Frank. Frank reminded everyone that we have already noted that the NASA logo will need to be changed to the ARISS logo, but Sergey suggested that the NASA and RSC-Energia logos be on it somewhere, although smaller. Sergey informed everyone that Sergey Krikalev is now RSC-Energia’s vice-president of manned spaceflight operations.

4. SuitSat-2 Status, Presenter: L. McFadin

The power system design is being finalized. Prototypes of the various portions of the design are being tested and the software is being written. The Software Defined Radio (SDR) is coming along well. The prototype antenna is being tested and is working out well. The request for frequency coordination is being worked, but there still are some TBD’s, mostly the commands and command telemetry. Rosalie reported that the lesson plans and the public education and outreach websites are under development. NASA’s writers are working on a feature article for teachers, and will be distributed by a formal press release. In response to a question, Lou noted that we anticipate not having the low effective radiated power problem this time, due to the fact it is a completely different transmitter and that the system will be completely assembled and tested prior to shipment to Russia.

5. Columbus Module Status, Presenter: G. Bertels

The first test unit of the patch antenna should be received from Pawel next week, and will be displayed March 5 – 9 for the European Parliament deputies (along with mockups of Sputniks 40 and 41 that Gaston was able to obtain.) Testing will begin, and after the flight units have completed environmental testing they will be coated with SiO2 at NASA-Goddard. ESA has an issue with doing the coating after testing, but it will be worked as the coating is very thin, roughly .0254 mm. Gaston asked for NASA assistance with this issue.

6. New business

None.

The next ARISS-I teleconference will be Tuesday, March 20, 2007 at 11:15 UTC.

Respectfully submitted,

Mark Steiner, K3MS, for the ARISS Team