ARISS-Europe News Bulletin – 15.06.2006
ASTRONAUT JEFF WILLIAMS TALKS WITH
BRITISH STUDENTS ON SPACE CAMP
Tuesday 13 June 2006 at 13:38 UTC, British students had an exciting space talk with US
astronaut Jeff Williams, KD5TVQ, onboard the
International Space Station.
About 60 students and their teachers from
Gillingham School, Dorset, UK are on Space Camp this week at the Euro Space Center. ESC is a residential (100 beds) Space Camp for
youngsters (8-18), located in Belgium near Bastogne
(see Battle of the Bulge, Christmas 1944). Youngsters from many European
countries come on Space Camp to ESC where monitors handle several languages.
ESC also hosts a permanent Space Expo and a restaurant open to visitors, as
well as amateur radio club station ON4ESC.
This week, the ISS
passes over Europe occur at night. Therefore, the ARISS
School Contact at ESC was done per telebridge. ARISS ground station W6SRJ,
located in Junior College, Santa Rosa California, established the radio contact
with the ISS and Verizon
Conferencing offered the phone link to Belgium. W6SRJ
was operated by Bill Hillendahl, KH6GJV,
assisted by Don Dalby, KH6UAY.
Will Marchant, KC6ROL
moderated the contact. At the Euro Space Center,
operations were handled by Gaston Bertels, ON4WF and Philippe
Van houte, ON5PV.
Twenty students (age 15-17) had been
prepared carefully for the space talk, queuing to read their question loud and
clear in the microphone, without losing any time. Once the contact
established, all twenty questions were
answered by Jeff Williams :
- seeing all the details of the earth is
a unique experience
- launch and docking went pretty much as
expected
- we get up at 06:00 GMT and go to bed at
10:00
- we have a special toilet onboard;
bodily waste is collected in sealed containers and put in the Progress which
burns up completely on re-entry
- to become an astronaut the best suited
studies are sciences, engineering or the medical field
- it has never happened that an astronaut
had to leave the space station on short notice because of illness or accident;
we have a lot of medical equipment onboard
- considering the commitment of several
countries, a manned space flight to mars around 2020 seems realistic
- the sea wave of a tsunami would only be
visible from space under a given angle of sun reverberation, but the
destructions are clearly visible
- we have redundant sources of oxygen
onboard and repair of the electric oxygen generator causes no real worry
- the space station is a noisy
environment; we have earplugs at our disposal, but I don’t use them
- the Soyuz, the Progress and the future
European ATV are sufficient for maintaining a permanent crew onboard, but the
Shuttle is needed to install the European and the Japanese modules and achieve
complete construction of the station
- when two crewmembers perform an EVA the
advantage is they can help each other
- fumes of volcanoes are very easy to see;
a few weeks ago I saw an eruption in the Alaskan Aleutian islands
- we can see meteor tracks in the
atmosphere when looking down in the night sky; I saw some on a previous mission
- the rising moon looking bigger than when
it is high in the sky is an atmospheric phenomenon; from space it is quite
different
- many experiences we perform in space
are beneficial for life on earth, for example research on renal stones and
bones disease
- I see dust storms and haze but it is
difficult to say if there is pollution in it; general atmospheric pollution is
not easily observable, but some forms of pollution, such as big fires, are easy
to see
- looking at the earth from space and
seeing how beautiful it is makes you aware what we have been given and how much
we should take care of it
- when going to bed and closing the eyes
in the dark, I experience light flashes in the corner of the eye; they say this
is due to cosmic rays
- after two months in space,
weightlessness has become a quite natural feeling.
The audience thanked Jeff Williams for
this space talk by sending him a huge applause. Before the ISS
went over the horizon in Santa Rosa, Jeff had still time enough to wish the
students a enjoyable space camp. He also encouraged them to study hard and said
perhaps some of them would contribute to space exploration and even go to mars.
In the auditorium, not only the sixty
British students assisted to the event, but also fifty French schoolchildren
who were visiting the Euro Space Center for just one
day. When the contact was over and Will Marchant had
congratulated and thanked the volunteering team members, the telebridge came to an end. Next, for the benefit of the
French visitors, a teacher translated the questions and the answers into
French.
The ARISS
School Contact was broadcast on IRLP by Waine Harasimovitch, VE1WPH and on Echolink by Dieter Schliemann,
KX4Y.
An audio recording and pictures of this space contact
are hereto attached.
73
Gaston Bertels,
ON4WF
ARISS-Europe chairman
