ARISS Celebrates 40 Years of Hams on the Radio Space

ARISS celebrated the positive impact of 40 years of amateur radio on human space flight at its conference held late last month at the Centre for Space Education: Astronauts Memorial Foundation near the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida. One hundred and ten leaders, volunteers and fans of the program gathered to hear and see memorabilia from the past four decades and got a look into how to rocket into the future.

Keynote speaker Richard Garriott, ex-W5KWQ, inspired the group toward a bold future and passed his license exam at the conference to become re-licensed. His previous license had lapsed not long ago.

ARISS also had a few announcements, including a new partnership with Estes model rockets and expansion of the SPARKI radio kit availability for school classrooms. HamTV will return on the next ISS supply mission, SpaceX 30, scheduled for mid-March and be returned to service soon after.

Lou McFadin, W5DID, received a special achievement award for his work in building amateur stations in space since the very first one on STS-9, which carried the first Spacelab mission and the first astronaut representing the European Space Agency 40 years ago.

Of course, the crowd was treated to a live contact with astronauts on the ISS as three youths presented their questions to the astronauts.