Upcoming ARISS contact with ITIS Giovanni Caramuel,Vigevano, Italy

An International Space Station school contact has been planned with participants at ITIS Giovanni Caramuel, Vigevano, Italy on 15 Feb. The event is scheduled to begin at approximately 10:16 UTC. The duration of the contact is approximately 9 minutes and 30 seconds. The contact will be a telebridge between NA1SS and AH6NM.

The contact will probably be broadcast on EchoLink AMSAT (node 101 377) and JK1ZRW (node 277 208) Conference servers, as well as on IRLP Discovery Reflector 9010.

The Industrial Technical Institute was founded in Vigevano on October 1, 1965 as a branch of ITIS CARDANO in Pavia. In 1976 it became independent and started a Mechanics course. During the school year 1978/79 the institute is named after Juan Caramuel, Spanish man of art and science. In the next few years the educational offer of the Institute has been completed with technical courses in Electronics and Telecommunication, Computer Science and Chemistry, Materials and Biotechnology.

In the school year 1996/97 a new Scientific Technological Lyceum is added, becoming later Applied Sciences Lyceum after the school  reform in 2010. It is a specific course, which is independent from the Industrial Technical Institute, having a syllabus very similar to the traditional Scientific Lyceum but with a greater commitment to technological society.

The institute has more than 600 students and 31 classes. It is housed in a recently built building owned by the Province of Pavia; it can be considered a modern school, since a big attention is paid to the most innovative educational technologies of the present time, which include up-to-date laboratories. In the school year 2010/11 the Institute obtained from the Ministry of Education the CertINT certificate, due to the school's commitment in activities carried out in the field of internationality and intercultural exchange.

The contact is expected to be conducted in Italian.

Participants will ask as many of the following questions as time allows:

1.  How big is the Space Station and how far is it from the Earth?

2.  Is it true that there is no gravity on the space station?

3.  How long does it take to complete an orbit around the Earth?

4.  What technological appliances are you testing on the ISS at the moment?

5.  How do you resupply oxygen and water aboard the ISS?

6.  What do you eat in space?

7.  How can you drink in microgravity?

8.  How can you sleep in space?

9.  Where do you put your waste?

10.  How do your muscles react to space environment?

11.  Which material are your spacesuits made of?

12.  What are the risks of exposure to space radiations?

13.  When you were a teenager, did you ever dream about the experience that   

     you are currently living?

14.  How does the Sun, the Moon and the Earth look from the space station?

15.  Which time zone do you follow in space?

16.  What do you do if one of you get sick?

17.  Do you have to attend a specific course to become an astronaut?

18.  To which territorial jurisdiction are you subject?

19.  How long do you stay aboard the space station?

20.  How did you train yourself to get used to the absence of weight?

21.  Do you listen to music on the ISS? If yes, which kind of?

22.  What is your favourite memory of your space adventure?

73

Gaston Bertels, ON4WF

ARISS Europe Chairman