SB SAREX @ AMSAT $STS-93.001 STS-93 SAREX Bulletin 1: Columbia Ready Silver Spring, Maryland USA July 19, 1999 @ 2300 UTC Columbia Ready for the Final SAREX Flight Just a few hours before launch, operations continue on schedule for space shuttle Columbia on STS-93, the brief five-day mission on which the Chandra X-Ray Observatory will be deployed. According to Reuters news service, Chandra, named for late Indian- born Nobel Laureate Subrahmanyan Chanrasekhar, known as Chandra to his friends, will study X-ray emissions from distant stars and galaxies that are largely undetectable from earth because of atmospheric distortion. STS-93 is the 25th and final flight of the Space Amateur Radio EXperiment (SAREX) on the space shuttle. Amateur Radio in human space flight will continue the fine tradition set by the shuttle and space station Mir by soon boarding the International Space Station. This will take the form of the multinational Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS). As in previous SAREX missions, crew members will take turns making scheduled 2-way radio contacts with schools, random radio contacts with Amateur Radio operators, and a few personal contacts with their families. Five schools are scheduled to talk with the astronauts using ham radio frequencies and the volunteer-based AMSAT Telebridge Network. The primary goal of the SAREX and ARISS programs is to excite the students' interest in science, technology, mathematics and the U.S. and international space program. To find out when Columbia will be in your radio range, a satellite tracking program for your personal computer can be obtained from the AMSAT web site at or other sources, or watch for SAREX Rise/Set times in coming SAREX bulletins. Here is a pre-launch set of the estimated orbital elements from Gil Carman, WA5NOM, that describes the orbit during the time period when the school contacts and most of the amateur radio operations are to take place: STS-093 1 99093U 99202.11969685 .00195261 00000-0 45118-3 0 39 2 99093 28.4716 190.1407 0001364 70.2068 289.8869 15.95498675 165 Satellite: STS-093 Catalog number: 99093 Epoch time: 99202.11969685 = (21-Jul-1999 02:52:21.808 UTC) Element set: 003 Inclination: 28.4716 deg RA of node: 190.1407 deg Space Shuttle Flight STS-093 Eccentricity: .0001364 Prelaunch element set JSC-003 Arg of perigee: 70.2068 deg Launch: 20-Jul-1999 04:36:00 UTC Mean anomaly: 289.8869 deg Mean motion: 15.95498675 rev/day Gil Carman Decay rate: 1.95261e-03 rev/day^2 NASA Johnson Space Center Epoch rev: 16 Checksum: 346 Deorbit: 25-Jul-1999 02:31 UTC (orbit 79) MET 04/21:55 Landing: 25-Jul-1999 03:23 UTC (orbit 80) MET 04/22:47 Introducing the crew of Columbia on STS-93: Commander (CDR) Eileen Collins, KD5EDS Pilot (PLT) Jeffrey Ashby Mission Specialist 1 (MS1) Cady Coleman, KC5ZTH Mission Specialist 2 (MS2) Steven Hawley Mission Specialist 3 (MS3) Michel Tognini, KD5EJZ Frequencies in MHz (FM): Uplink Downlink Packet 144.49 145.80 European voice 144.49 145.80 Voice (except over Europe) 144.47 145.80 Voice (except over Europe) 144.45 145.80 School contacts varies 145.80 Outside Europe, pick one of the two voice frequencies at random. NOTES: SAREX voice and packet radio operations will begin before the first school contact which occurs early in Flight Day 2. Gil Carman, WA5NOM, says the crew has expressed a preference for voice mode over packet during the periods when they are awake, with the packet robot on only during sleep periods. All passes over the continental U.S. are during their awake shifts, and all sleep passes will be over Asia and South America. So, U.S. stations may have few packet opportunities on this flight. Please listen on the downlink for the crew to call CQ. If the crewperson is in the middle of a QSO please wait until they are done. Packet: Connect to W5RRR-1 and you will get a packet connect number from the robot mode. Please do this only once. Connecting multiple times only deprives others of a chance to participate. Turn on monitoring to see who else is working the robot mode and to get status messages from the SAREX packet rig. Please do not connect to other ground stations through the SAREX packet rig. Timely and highly valuable information is being released by Bob Bruninga, WB4APR, on the anticipated SAREX packet radio operations and APRS opportunities. Watch for his posts to the sarex@amsat.org e-mail list and various TAPR and APRS mail lists , and news in these SAREX bulletins . Bulletin updates will be released periodically through the mission. You may also check for late braking news. Submitted by Pat Kilroy, WD8LAQ, for Will Marchant, KC6ROL, and the SAREX Working Group. /EX