2 July, 2005

ARISS-EUROPE NEWS BULLETIN

1. ARISS-EUROPE MEETING IN FRIEDRICHSHAFEN

Friday 24 June 2005 an ARISS-Europe meeting took place in Friedrichshafen during Ham Radio. 19 participants discussed ARISS activities and projects.

2. SUITSAT

SuitSat, a Russian ORLAN Spacesuit converted into an orbiting satellite, will transmit a 500 mW signal on 145.990 MHz FM. Voice recordings from youngsters in English, French, German, Spanish, Russian and Japanese will send greetings to the youth, worldwide. Each message will be about 20 seconds, separated by 30 seconds without signal. There will also be an SSTV picture as well as English spoken telemetry (elapsed time, temperature, battery voltage). The total transmit cycle will be about 8 minutes, which easily fits in a normal pass. Details will be made available in due time.

175 contributions from schools from all over the world have been burned in a CD which will be hosted in the SuitSat and be part of this unique Ham Radio satellite. The artwork of the schoolchildren and students will orbit the earth for several weeks. A copy of the CD will stay onboard the ISS, at the disposal of the crew.

3. COLUMBUS

The antenna project on Columbus, the European ISS module, is making good progress. The funding campaign has rendered sufficiently to pay for the L/S-band antennas.

Whereas AMSAT Belgium has collected the donations, the Royal Belgian Amateur Radio Union (UBA) has accepted to sign the contract with the Wroclaw Technical University on behalf of the ARISS organisation. The contract covers the development and construction of the combined L-band / S-band patch antennas. A first installment of 25.000 Euro has been paid. The second installment (22.000 Euro) is due 15 october 2005. The antennas will be delivered October 2005 to EADS, Bremen to be installed on Columbus.

There is still a possibility to order the UHF antennas in due time, provided sufficient funding is found before end of August. The sum needed for the UHF antennas is 30.000 Euro.

When the antennas will be installed, the next step will be the study and the development of the onboard amateur radio equipment.

73

Gaston Bertels, ON4WF

ARISS-Europe chairman