ISS contact Tuesday afternoon

British amateurs will be involved in facilitating a ‘telebridge’ contact between the International Space Station and a children’s summer camp at NASA Space Center Houston on Tuesday afternoon, the 13th of June 2017.

The voice downlink (astronaut) transmissions will be audible over much of Europe on 145.800MHz from about 1519UTC.

The HAMTV amateur television transmitter will also be active and should be transmitting from on-board the ISS.

These HamTV transmissions can be received by stations in Europe and for the ARISS internet video stream, UK by members of the British Amateur Television Club will be operating the ‘HamTV Merger’ facility.  This is a new facility that has been developed from the successful Principia activities last year and provides a single view of the HamTV signal from multiple ground stations.  Several HamTV receiving stations will be involved in the contact, including the Goonhilly Earth Station, which featured predominately in the Tim Peake Principia mission. These transmissions will be monitored in the UK by members of the British Amateur Television Club operating from Goonhilly Earth Station.

The video will be streamed live via the BATC website and can be watched by anyone.

Telebridge arrangements are used when the ISS is not in a convenient place for the contact to take place via direct link from the ground, and rely on amateurs in a separate country — Belgium, in this case — relaying voice and, sometimes, video to the participants.

Category: Front Page News, GB2RS Headlines