ASTRONAUTS
ROBERT THIRSK, FRANK DE WINNE AND CHRISTER FUGLESANG TALKS TO ESOC-ESA, LONG
NIGHT OF THE STARS IN DARMSTADT, GERMANY
Friday evening, September 4, 2009, the ESOC-ESA Long Night Of The Stars in
Darmstadt, Geramy, performed an ARISS contact with astronauts Robert Thirsk,
Frank de Winne and Christer Fuglesang. The contact was a telebridge between
onboard station NA1SS and the ARISS telebridge ground station LU8YY in
ESOC is an establishment of the European Space Agency ESA from which all
European science and earth observation satellites are controlled. To stay in
contact with the spacecraft, ESOC designs and operates the ESA ground stations
on several continents.
The event called 'The long night of the stars' welcomes the public to visit the
centre and to see control rooms, facilities and to learn about space and
satellite operations. A variety of attractions from live view to the stars by
semi-professional telescopes, demonstration on robotics and artificial
intelligence provided additional view in technological developments. For the
visiting children a dedicated program was available. From making a virtual 3
dimensional tour from earth to space with virtual visits on the Moon or on Mars
gave visions for the future in space. More realistic, a paper rocket building
and a toy rocket flying contest did attract the attention of the youngsters.
For the ARISS contact, students aged between 14 and 16 years from the nearby
school centre 'Schuldorf Bergstrasse', located in Seeheim, asked questions to
the astronauts.
The audience at the contact site, right in front of the stage, was about 200
people. Moreover, the contact coordinator Rolf Maarschalkerweerd DF7FU
implemented several audio and video links to all the visitor rooms of the Open
Day event at ESOC. In that way other 750 visitors followed the ARISS contact.
Graham Lawton, G7EVY, helped the technical team in feeding into the AMSAT
Echolink servers.
At 20.11 UTC contact with NA1SS was established by LU8YY but a sudden technical
problem with the audio mixer at the ESOC contact site provoked a delay. A few
minutes later, at 20.15 UTC, i.e. 22.15 local time, the
former ESA astronaut Reinhold Ewald did send a greeting to his
colleagues and the first question got finally through. The astronauts Robert
Thirsk, Frank De Winne and Christer Fuglesang answered alternatingly 10
questions of the students plus a spontaneous question in the middle of the
contact live from the stage. The audio from the ISS was mostly good with fading
at times. Finally, the astronauts could hear the applause of the audience in
The contact was covered by the TV station Hessischer Rundfunk HR3, the radio
station HR-Info Radio Hessischer Rundfunk Frankfurt and the two newspapers
Frankfurter Rundschau and Darmstaedter Echo. There was a live coverage via the
Internet (Kosmologs) and five free lancing journalists attended also the event.
Congratulations to the ESOC-ESA team!
73, Peter Kofler, IN3GHZ, ARISS mentor
www.ariss-eu.org