TOG members have been busy helping to organise a school contact using Amateur Radio between two schools and the International Space Station as it passes over Ireland.
The event is organised as part of ARISS, which is a working group that helps schedule live link ups using Amateur Radio Equipment on board the ISS.
While demand is high, and the waiting list long, TOG has been working for more than three years to get a date.
We have a possible date now of October 2017, and we are working on getting the radio equipment ready to bring to the schools so we can make the link up happen.
These events use radio to allow a live link up between six and twelve minutes long as the orbiting space station passes over Ireland.
The ISS is in low earth orbit which means its relative position over the ground constantly changes and it orbits the earth every 94 minutes.
It travels at 27,600 kilometres per hour about 400km above the ground in a micro gravity environment.
The ARISS group organises live link ups squeezed in between the astronauts very busy schedules, between scientific experiments.
The events give the students the opportunity to ask questions to Astronauts currently on board the ISS, and enable the astronauts to take a few minutes from the daily tasks of completing check lists, and running experiments.
We expect the Astronaut that will be available to speak to the students in October 2017 will be Paulo Nespoli.
This Italian born astronaut has been to space twice before. He is due to launch again for Space on July 28th 2017 and all going well, will be scheduled to speak with Irish students in October.
We will have more information closer to the event, but if you want to watch Paulo launch in his rocket follow this link:
https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/#public
Coverage starts 15:45 Irish Time/14:45GMT/10:45 Eastern Time on July 28th 2017
Launch Scheduled 16:41 Irish Time/15:41GMT/11:41 Eastern Time on July 28th 2017
ISS Expedition 52-53/Soyuz MS-05 Launch Coverage includes video B-roll of the crew’s launch day pre-launch activities at 11 a.m. ET;
You make like to view the inside of the space station as available on street view.
https://www.google.com/streetview/#international-space-station/
The Amateur Radio equipment is located in the Columbus Module, while there is more equipment in the service module.
This event is in conjunction with ARISS, European Space Agency, South Dublin Radio Club, Cork Radio Club and many other volunteers and partners included below
http://www.irts.ie
http://www.southdublinradioclub.ie
http://www.geocities.ws/ei5crc/menu.htm
http://cork.etb.ie/
http://www.sfi.ie/
http://esero.ie/
https://www.bco.ie/
http://nationalspacecentre.eu/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paolo_Nespoli
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_MS-05