ARISS International Teleconference

Tuesday February 21, 2006 12:30 UTC (7:30 am ET)

Participants:

Frank Bauer

Rosalie White

Sergey Samburov

Larry Agabekov

Masanobu Tsuji

Robin Haighton

Ken Pulfer

Keigo Komuro

Mark Steiner

Daniel Lamoureux

Ken Nichols

Gaston Bertels

Lou McFadin

Keith Pugh

Carol Jackson

Carlos Eavis

Miles Mann

Interpreter: Angelique Brice

Not present:

Graham Shirville

Tadeu Fernandes

Jim Heck

Bill Boston

Dave Larsen

Jon Neubauer

Bob Bruninga

ARISS I Agenda:

Administrative Session

1. Suitsat Status (including SuitSat certificate), Presenter: F. Bauer

Despite the unexpected and problematic low signal strength, SuitSat as a whole was very successful. There were over 9 million visits to the SuitSat.org webpage and ham radio received a good deal of publicity world-wide. The premature announcement of the early death of SuitSat and the later retraction probably contributed to the extra attention. Many schools still got involved, and we have many ideas that will improve lesson plans in the future. The difficulty in receiving the signal motivated many hams to improve their stations and many more folks became interested in amateur radio because of the general heightened awareness of amateur radio. The international community can be proud of the way our team pulled together to quickly bring the hardware together for launch and keep the program successful despite the low signal strength. Certificates will be presented to those who helped the program succeed. There will be a different certificate, more like an SWL acknowledgement, for those who were able to successfully copy SuitSat. The plan is to run this much like we did the Roy Neal special certificate. The goal is to have this out by the end of March. Frank will put together a “lessons learned” effort to improve the next opportunity to do a SuitSat.

2. NASA Education Budget and International Activities, Presenter: F. Bauer

NASA Headquarters is in the process of cutting all funding for ARISS and ISS Ham for FY 2006 (October 1, 2005 – September 30, 2006), which has major impacts on the US side and is a major issue for ARISS. Among all of its uses, the majority of the funding pays for the US part of the equipment, Carol Jackson’s crucial administrative support, equipment safety validation and documentation and salaries for Frank Bauer and Mark Steiner while on official status and while on travel. NASA Headquarters asked if we could stand down operations for the remainder of FY 2006. NASA-HQ wanted to send out letters to begin the shutdown, but we are trying to delay this action, and are notifying the rest of the ARISS US community and portions of NASA affected by the funding cut, including the ISS Program Office and the astronaut office. The team is pursuing potential options to maintain the program without NASA funding, but our intent is to restore and maintain NASA-HQ support for ARISS. In the mean time we are trying to keep things going by being frugal with the remaining funds from FY2005, so you may see some things being slowed down or stopped until we straighten out the funding situation. One immediate impact will be the indefinite delay of the mini-TIM with Sergey. Frank is optimistic that we ultimately will get funding to keep the program operating in the manner in which we have been accustomed, but it may be difficult in the short term. Frank’s intent is not to alarm everyone, but let them know what is going on, especially if NASA-HQ’s begins communicating their intent to the international community. One concern would be the likelihood of shutting down the US team’s support to the school contact program.

3. Bill McArthur’s QSL cards, Presenter: K. Ransom

Bill has been busy, and has worked 107 DX entities. Kenneth is trying to ensure that all cards are processed in a timely manner. Also, if the QSL bureaus can send in representative continent cards quickly then Kenneth can put together a WAC certificate to present to Bill about a month after landing.

4. New Business (administrative only)

Gaston noted that the flight antennas for the Columbus module were delivered last Friday, February 17, 2006. Frank congratulated Gaston and the ARISS-EU team for their great work on this.

General Session

5. List of Skype Users, Presenter: R. White

Rosalie is collecting Skype user data to be included in the ARISS roster maintained by Carol Jackson. The intent is not to replace major telecons with Skype as only 4 people can be tied together via Skype.

6. New business

There were some coordination discussions regarding SuitSat tracking and the contacts for Marcus Pontes.

Irina Roshkova is in Houston and has a DVD with the SuitSat EVA video.

Miles spoke with Bill McArthur and Bill indicated that there was a computer on board which is not being used, but he does not have permission to use it for ISS Ham at this point in time.

Respectfully submitted,

Mark Steiner, K3MS, for the ARISS Team