ARISS International Team Teleconference

Tuesday, March 15, 2011, 11:15 UTC (7:15 am ET)

Participants:

Gaston Bertels

Mark Steiner

Rosalie White

Larry Agabekov

Masanobu Tsuji

Lou McFadin

Keith Pugh

Carlos Eavis

Graham Shirville

Fabio Azzarello

Carlos Neta

Carol Jackson

Mark Severance

Maurice André Vigneault

David Jordan

Gould Smith

Barry Baines

Steve Ponder

Dave Taylor

Ken Nichols

Darin Cowan

Not Present:

Sergey Samburov

Keigo Komuro

Kenneth Ransom

Tadeu Fernandes

Francesco De Paolis

Daniel Lamoureux

Bill Boston

ARISS I Agenda:

Administrative Session

The group held a moment of silence for the victims of the disasters in Japan.

1. ISS National Lab, Presenter: M. Severance

This effort in the United States started several years ago when the U.S. Congress asked NASA to partner with entities outside NASA (academic, non-profit, and commercial) to broaden the research beyond NASA's range of research. The U.S. Congress declared the U.S. segment of the ISS a national lab in order to make the most effective use of the capabilities, and the designation is the “ISS National Lab.” A particular aim was to develop a STEM education program with these partners. This resulted in ARISS becoming a payload under the ISS National Lab Education Program umbrella, enabling more resources to be brought to bear on ARISS. The “National Lab” title should not be a matter of concern, as the Education Program intends to keep the international aspects that have made ARISS so successful to date.

NASA is the overall program integrator and operator for the ISS, and this primarily enables NASA to develop external partnerships, including external funding.

This is just the beginning of the conversation for the ARISS international delegates, to be continued over the next several telecons and culminating with strategic discussions at the October face to face meeting.

2. New business (administrative only) – None.

General Session

3. Columbus module status, Presenter: G. Bertels

Discussions still continue on the ADS-B use of one of the L-band antennas for reception only at 1.09 GHz.

Gaston has heard that ESA is having detailed discussions with Kayser-Italia regarding the K-I proposal for HAM-TV as an educational project in Columbus.

Stefan Riemann’s company is developing the new MPEG-4 standard. He has offered an MPEG-4 board to the ARISS/ARCOL working group. The board is sent to AMSAT Italia for evaluation of the gain of efficiency with this new standard when applied to the HamTV project.

4. HamTV - PS&U status, Presenters: M. Steiner, L. McFadin

The status of the PS&U Committee is that its members have not changed, and it has not received new technical details for HamTV.

5. ARISSat-1 status, Presenters: L. McFadin, G. Smith

No communications have been received from either Sergey Samburov or RSC-E regarding official plans for ARISSat-1 operation or deploy on April 12. Sergey is on vacation for the whole month of March and not available for consultation. For the potential internal operations, it is likely that the satellite would be operated in the same mode as for testing, low duty cycle (on for one minute then off for two minutes) with VHF transmissions only. AMSAT is working on the ground station software as well as educational materials to be provided to take advantage of the publicity that will be generated.

6. New business

The next international partners telecon will be Tuesday, April 19, 2011.

Respectfully submitted,

Mark Steiner, K3MS, for the ARISS Team