Spacex Awarded Contract To De-Orbit ISS

The year 2030 is not so far away - and for the International Space Station that doesn't just mean retirement but destruction.

NASA's plan to de-orbit the International Space Station by the year 2030 now has an active partner in the process. The US space agency has awarded Elon Musk's SpaceX 843 million US dollars to develop a vehicle that will destroy the orbiting space laboratory. The ISS, which has been in orbit since 1998, has also been the home of Amateur Radio on the International Space Station, or ARISS, since late 2000, when the first ham radio contact was made with the Expedition-1 crew.

According to various media reports, SpaceX will design the de-orbit vehicle and set the stage for safe dismantling and disposal away from populated areas on Earth. NASA hopes it will find its final resting place somewhere in the Pacific Ocean between New Zealand and South America.

NTS Performance Analysis Tool in Development

An early project of the National Traffic System (NTS) 2.0 team was to create a “snapshot” of then-current system performance by originating test traffic to more than 150 recipients throughout the entire United States.

Key takeaways from that initial exercise included:

• System-wide, there is plenty of room for improvement in how quickly and how accurately messages get from origin to destination.

• To improve the quality of our post-exercise summaries, we need tools that make it easy for all who are involved in any aspect of a traffic exercise to report, collect, and analyze results.

In response to the first bullet above, we are developing new training materials – as well as pursuing other vehicles for raising awareness of the need to improve our system performance. (See, for instance, “Do Your PART” by W2RU in the May NTS Letter.)

To improve the value of the test exercises themselves, we need new tools to simplify the reporting process for all participants and to more quickly generate output summaries of value to net managers, STMs, HQ, and all other stakeholders, including all participants. To that end, we presently have under development a web-based Performance Analysis Tool (PAT) to fill the current void. And as soon as we can, we’ll be announcing a small exercise – perhaps as early as this fall — specifically intended to test the new tool.

Radio Relay Intl. - https://radiorelay.org/

Hams Intervene In Youth-On-Youth Violence In India

Sometimes, using your amateur radio contacts and connections - even without picking up a radio - can prove lifesaving. That's what happened recently when hams in India were able to help Bengali authorities in a situation involving youth-on-youth violence. 

As the Bengali government struggles with a reported regional rise in violence by youth mobs against other young people, a group of ham radio operators was able to intercede in what local media described as one such case. On July 4th, the website for The Statesman newspaper said a young man was accosted by a group of youths in front of the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur. As the assailants set upon him, accusing him of having stolen a mobile phone, two members of the West Bengal Radio Club were passing by. The two club members, who are shortwave listeners studying for their ham license, sent other club members photographs of the assailants and their victim via their mobile phones. The club secretary, Ambarish Nag Biswas, VU2JFA, said the photos were distributed to radio operators throughout the region using the WhatsApp mobile phone application. The young victim was soon identified by his brother in another town. He said his brother was suffering from psychological difficulties and had disappeared from home a few days earlier.

Police were called to the scene and rescued the young man. According to the news report, police determined that he had stolen nothing and could be returned to his family the next day.

Source ARNewsline - https://www.arnewsline.org/