Educational & Humanitarian projects on ISS Russian Segment

Experiment ARISS-TV

ARISS-TV experiment is included in the research program conducted onboard the ISS Russian Segment by spaceflight participant Richard Garriott within the framework of the GTA project.

Objective:

Conducting communications sessions to exchange digital images using a ham radio communications system in the SSTV (slow-scan television) mode.

Tasks:

• Conducting real-time radio communications sessions from on-board ISS RS to exchange digital images.
• Scanning Earth in slow-scan TV mode and downlinking the obtained images via a ham radio link.

Science Hardware Used:

ARISS-TV kit, which includes:

• Kenwood VC-H1
  is an interactive SSTV video receiver in the form of a compact mobile device operating from an autonomous power source (batteries) and consisting of scan converter, a CCD camera and an LCD screen.
  The device was developed for slow-scan color TV system and only needs to be connected to the on-board ham radio transceiver Kenwood D700.
• Extension cable for interactive video receiver VC-H1,
  which makes it possible to install the camera near ISS window to support the filming of the Earth surface. The photography of the underlying surface can be directly transmitted to Earth in the course of a live communications session via ham radio.

Flight Equipment Used:

Standard ham-radio equipment (Sputnik-SM system) included in the on-board equipment of the ISS RS Service Module.

Ham radio station Kenwood D700

Ham radio equipment onboard ISS RS SM

Two of the sessions, R.Garriot plans to conduct with American students in cooperation with Challenger Center for Space Science Education with an aim of popularizing space flight and space sciences among high-school and college students. Four schools will be involved in these sessions: Budbrooke School (Great Britain), Austin Liberal Arts and Sciences Academy и Pinehurst School (USA), National Space Challenge (Malaysia).
Three of these sessions will be dedicated to reception/transmission of high-quality images with participation of Russian specialists from RSC Energia and Cosmonaut Training Center.

Experiment Results:

Conversations of the space flight participant of Visiting Mission 15 with ground users, taking place in the course of real-time ham radio communications sessions, as well as video images uplinked/downlinked to/from ISS in real-time via ham radio.