Lamar Elementary School ARISS Contact
17 October, 2002


Lamar Students GREENVILLE, TX, Oct 18, 2002--Fourth-grader Kyle Bryant made a career choice Thursday morning. He's going to become an astronaut. At least that's what he told his teacher, James Jones, after he and nine of his classmates at Lamar Elementary School in Greenville, Texas, fired off questions via ham radio to astronaut Peggy Whitson, KC5ZTD, aboard the International Space Station. The contact was arranged via the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) project.


Student QuestionKyle and his classmates at Lamar Elementary have been studying space and space travel for weeks in preparation for the ARISS QSO. Jones called the 10-minute experience "absolutely phenomenal," and added that it was "mind boggling" for his students to actually talk to Whitson after studying about her and her two crewmates, crew commander Valery Korzun, RZ3FK, and cosmonaut Sergei Treschev, RZ3FU.

"We've been tracking them for days on an Internet Web site," Jones said. "This was very impressive! It made a bunch of kids very happy!"


Last QuestionLamar Principal James Evans explained that since his school's new campus opened in August, the emphasis has been on science and space. "Every classroom has a display having to do with space," he noted.

Amateur Radio coordinator for the direct, 2-meter contact was Art Passannante, KC5GQP. He and his crew from Greenville set up their station outdoors in front of the school to accommodate a sizeable audience. The quad beams for the contact were hombrewed in classic ham radio fashion from scraps of all-thread, plastic pipe and wire salvaged from the trash pile at a construction site.

By all accounts, the contact went flawlessly. Among the onlookers were some 100 students, 20 parents, a dozen or so teachers and three reporters.

ARISS is an international project with US participation by NASA, ARRL and AMSAT.--Gene Chapline, K5YFL