Orbiting astronaut answers students’ questions about living in space
By JIM BROOKS
Nelson County Gazette
Friday, Jan. 28, 2011, 10 p.m. – Despite a few tense moments when an antenna connection failed, Foster Heights Elementary students were successful in their bid to talk to an astronaut aboard the orbiting International Space Station.
Fourteen students spent nearly 10 minutes asking U.S. astronaut Cady Coleman questions about life in space aboard the International Space Station. The group included students of Lacy Coyle-Hatfield, a fifth-grade teacher at Foster Heights.
The conversation took place over Amateur Radio – also known as “ham radio” – using the radio station installed in the classroom of Charlie Cantrill, an information technology teacher at the Nelson County Area Technology Center in Bardstown. Members of the vocational school technology club, operating as the Kentucky Space Science Academy, operated the station.
Using the special ham radio call sign K4SSA, Nelson ATC students Kyle Robinson, KJ4ZSF and Chandler Young, KJ4TNT operated the radio equipment. Both teens are licensed ham radio operators. FCC rules require a licensed operator to be in control of the equipment when unlicensed individuals are operating as a third party.
Hurtling overhead at 17,500 mph, the students had a maximum window of 9-1/2 minutes of time to talk to astronaut Coleman. Even with the glitch at the beginning of the attempt, the quick work by the Nelson ATC students gave the elementary school students just over 9 minutes of time talking to the ISS.
The contact was the first direct – meaning ground-to-space by radio – contact between a Kentucky school and the ISS as part of the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) program. The ARISS program began in 2000.
The historic nature of the radio contact wasn’t lost on the kids – or on the parents and family members who took time to attend the event.
For Cantrill’s students who are part of the technology club, talking to astronauts on the ISS is nothing new; using the school’s station, a number of club members have talked to ISS astronauts during the 2010-11 school year. In addition to the ISS astronauts, the club members have also used the station to contact other ham radio operators via a variety of ham radio satellites now in orbit.
The event attracted local and regional media. WBRT radio broadcast the audio of the entire 9-1/2 minute event after the station’s midday news. Ham radio operators elsewhere in the region also monitored the school’s conversation with the ISS.
With this achievement under their belts, Cantrill and his students are pressing forward with an ambitious agenda that includes balloon launches using ham radio equipment to transmit data and tracking information down to ground stations and satellite simulators. The Nelson ATC technology club will be traveling next week for a field trip to the Morehead State University Space Science Center.
To keep track of the activities of the Kentucky Space Science Academy, visit their Facebook page.
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