ARISS International Team Teleconference

 Tuesday, July 21, 2009, 11:15 UTC (7:15 am ET)

Participants:

Sergey Samburov

Rosalie White

Larry Agabekov

Keigo Komuro

Masanobu Tsuji

Ken Nichols

Gaston Bertels

Lou McFadin

Keith Pugh

Carlos Eavis

Graham Shirville

Ken Pulfer

Tom Clark

Tadeu Fernandes

Fabiano Moser

Will Marchant

Daniel Lamoureux

Kenneth Ransom

Mark Severance

Maurice André Vigneault

Bill Boston

Ed Pritchard

Ginny Stephenson

David Jordan

Interpreter, Gregory Kashin

Not Present:

Carol Jackson

Robin Haighton

Mark Steiner

ARISS I Agenda:

Administrative Session

1. ARISS-I Face to Face Meeting, June 2009, Comments Presenter: G. Bertels After performing a roll call, Gaston spent a few minutes reviewing the annual meeting, stating that the minutes were sent to the delegates. He thanked Rosalie for preparing those minutes and getting them sent to the delegates. Rosalie thanked Gaston for the wonderful accommodations at ESA, and for sending a thank you note to ESA on behalf of ARISS. Rosalie asked if there were further comments for the minutes to please forward them to her by the end of the week.

ESA’s head of the ISS program has now stated that when a school contact is scheduled in countries that are under ESA, ESA will provide educational support to each school. Languages can be problem, but ESA will work through that.

At the meeting the most important topic was how we work with the space agencies education office and installation of equipment on Columbus, and the review of the SuitSat-2 equipment. Shortly after the meeting we learned of the Orlan suits being discarded, but we now have options for moving forward.

2. New business (administrative only)

General Session

3. SuitSat-2 re-born, Presenter: L. McFadin, S. Samburov

Rosalie reported that the SuitSat-2 Team is continuing to work to meet the original SuitSat-2 launch deadlines, and that the team has actually found some benefits to working with a structure different from a spacesuit. She asked Lou to report further.

Lou explained that the team has met several times in the past few weeks to develop the new framework for a small satellite. The team has a new volunteer because of the new frame; he is a mechanical engineer who has a great deal of experience with Phase 3D, and he will design our frame. We are very lucky to have Bob Davis, KF4KSS. The change will make it a little more difficult to meet the timelines, but everyone is trying very hard. They are continuing to work closely with Sergey and Kursk University.

Gaston thanked the team and their hard efforts to meet the deadline. Sergey reported that the Russians have started the certification process. Sergey thanked Lou for getting the team to move forward so quickly. The mechanical features may be finalized by the end of this week.

Lou proposed a new name suggested by a team member – Phoenix – because of rising out of the ashes. Sergey said that in Russia the word is very similar and Russians know the myth, and they will still use the Radioskaf nomenclature, as was done with SuitSat-1. Graham was a little concerned that this name may be associated with another spacecraft. Rosalie suggested he do a little study and then she will send an email to ask delegates to vote. Sergey suggests our web page should be named Satellite Phoenix.

Gaston thanked Lou and Sergey for the updates.

4. New business

Next month’s Meeting

Gaston asked the team to look at their August 18 schedules as a meeting date and send a note to Rosalie if they cannot attend.