06/13/2016
Three radio amateurs onboard the International Space Station (ISS[1]) will
depart the orbiting outpost at the end of the week. Expedition 47 Commander Tim
Kopra, KE5UDN; Flight Engineer Tim Peake, KG5BVI/GB1SS, and Yuri Malenchenko,
RK3DUJP, will undock from the space station early on Saturday morning, July 18
(the evening of Friday, July 17, in US time zones) in a Soyuz TMA-19M
spacecraft commanded by Malenchenko, after spending 186 days in space since
their December launch. NASA Television will provide coverage[2] starting on
June 17.
When the Soyuz undocks, ISS Expedition 48 will begin under the command of Jeff
Williams, KD5TVQ. Williams and crewmates Oleg Skripochka, RN3FU, and Alexey
Ovchinin will operate the station for 3 weeks until the arrival of the next
crew increment. NASA astronaut Kate Rubins, KG5FXJ; Russian cosmonaut Anatoly
Ivanishin, and Takuya Onishi, KF5LKS, of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency
are scheduled to launch on July 6 from Baikonur, Kazakhstan.
During their stay, Kopra and Peake scored some milestones for the Amateur Radio
on the International Space Station (ARISS[3]) program. On March 10, Kopra
conducted the 1000th ARISS school group contact with students in North Dakota.
The first contact occurred in December of 2000. Peake made use of Amateur Radio
in his "Principia Mission[4]" outreach, which aimed to directly engage students
with communication technologies, inspiring them to pursue careers in Science,
Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) fields. During his stay in space, Peake
conducted the first ARISS school group contact to take advantage of the HamTV
digital Amateur Radio television (DATV) system when he spoke with students on
February 11 at a school in Rickmansworth, England. The DATV system in the
Columbus module of the ISS allowed students at Royal Masonic School, home of
GB1RSM, to see as well as listen, as Peake, operating as GB1SS, answered their
questions about life in space.
The Orbital ATK Cygnus cargo craft now attached to the ISS will be released
from the Unity module on June 14. Peake and Kopra will be at the controls of
the Canadarm2 robotic arm when it releases Cygnus, which will orbit Earth for 8
more days of scientific tests exploring how materials burn in space and the
orbital dynamics of a destructive re-entry into Earth's atmosphere.
[1] http://www.nasa.gov/station
[2] https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-tv-to-air-return-of-nasa-astronaut-t
wo-crewmates-from-space-station
[3] http://www.ariss.org/
[4] https://principia.org.uk/
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