ARISS International Teleconference

Tuesday, March 16, 2010, 11:15 UTC (7:15 am EDT)

Participants:

Sergey Samburov

Rosalie White

Mark Steiner

Keigo Komuro

Masanobu Tsuji

Ken Nichols

Gaston Bertels

Lou McFadin

Graham Shirville

Keith Pugh

Ken Pulfer

Carol Jackson

Daniel Lamoureux

Kenneth Ransom

Mark Severance

Maurice André Vigneault

Gould Smith

Barry Baines

Dan Schultz

Interpreter, Olga Chichkina

Not Present:

Fabiano Moser

Larry Agabekov

David Jordan

Tadeu Fernandes

Bill Boston

Ed Pritchard

Will Marchant

Carlos Eavis

ARISS I Agenda:

Administrative Session

1. New business (administrative only)

None.

General Session

2. New Image for ARISS QSL card, Presenter: R. White

Thanks to Kenneth, Rosalie was able to get a listing of recent photographs of the ISS for consideration for the card, per Sergey’s request. She reviewed them, narrowed the list a bit, and sent it out for the delegates to decide upon their top two or three choices. She is still waiting for final inputs. Gaston will shortly have the input from Europe. He received an inquiry regarding the possibility of including a picture of the equipment as an inset to the overall picture. Rosalie suggested that we wait until this latest set of equipment is up, although it was pointed out that the equipment will likely always be changing. Sergey noted the pending addition of another Russian module, already in the shuttle payload bay, the MRM-1 called “Dawn”. Rosalie asked that Sergey send a short description for the back of the card.

3. Columbus Module status, Presenter: G. Bertels, M. Severance

The installation of the Ericsson in the Columbus module is scheduled for installation by Mike Fincke on his shuttle flight, and ESA hopes to have a special contact to commemorate the first operation of amateur radio in the Columbus Module.

Gaston reported that the Amateur Radio – Columbus (ARCOL) Working Group, first assembled to get the two L- and S-band patch antennas mounted on the exterior of the Columbus Module, is currently proposing the flight of a digital amateur television (DATV) system to downlink TV on S-band. US team members Mark Severance, Mark Steiner, Lou McFadin, Kenneth Ransom, Rosalie White, and Carol Jackson are assisting. ESA is in the process of considering this proposal for a December installation. The biggest technical challenge is the obtaining of a suitable power supply, and Gaston is working with ESA to make this happen.

While this will open up an exciting new capability for education contacts, it will require a more capable ground station to receive S-band DATV signals. This has implications for the existing telebridge stations, including how the DATV images would be routed to the event sites. Gaston will be establishing a working group to help tackle these two challenges (reception and passing to the event site), and is actively soliciting volunteers to help out.

4. ARISSat-1 status, Presenter: L. McFadin

Lou and Gould Smith reported that the final two circuit boards should be finished in the next few days after which mechanical assembly can be accomplished. Preparation of the AMSAT thermal vacuum test chamber is underway for thermal testing of the components. One item that is not going as well as hoped is the finding of a suitable quantity of appropriate Lexan for the protective covers over the solar arrays.

A discussion will be held immediately following this telecon between the US team and Sergey and Energia personnel to finalize the protocol specifying the July 1 delivery date to Russia.

Sergey is about to begin the training of the cosmonauts using water lab mockups of the satellite.

Keigo inquired as to the expected orbital lifetime of ARISSat-1. SuitSat-1 was up for 9 months, but the ballistic coefficient of the ARISSat-1 as compared to SuitSat-1 one is not completely characterized so it is difficult to give a more accurate estimate.

5. New business

None.

The next telecon is planned for Tuesday, April 20, 2010 at 11:15 UTC. Please note that Europe will be on daylight savings time at that point.

Respectfully submitted,

Mark Steiner, K3MS, for the ARISS Team