Date sent: Mon, 26 Jul 1999 18:02:54 -0400 To: sarex@AMSAT.Org From: Pat Kilroy Subject: [sarex] STS-93 SAREX Bulletin 7: Columbia-Mir PRESS RELEASE Copies to: nancy.neal@gsfc.nasa.gov SB SAREX @ AMSAT $STS-93.007 STS-93 SAREX Bulletin 7 Silver Spring, Maryland USA July 26, 1999 @ 0600 UTC Columbia and Mir Linked in a Trilingual Conversation Astronauts aboard the space shuttle Columbia on the STS-93 mission had the opportunity to talk with their fellow space travelers aboard the Russian Mir space station on Sunday, July 25, at 12:33 a.m. Houston time (0533 UTC). The contact was made through a combination of ham radio and NASA communications networks. The timing of the contact was tricky -- both crews had to be awake and Mir had to pass over a properly equipped amateur radio station. When Mir came over the horizon in Houston, Texas, volunteer amateur radio operator Brian Zemba made contact with French cosmonaut- researcher Jean-Pierre Haignere aboard Mir. Shuttle Columbia was almost half a world away, traveling over Indonesia. The space shuttle was patched in via NASA's communications network and Tracking Data and Relay Satellite (TDRS). French Mission Specialist Michel Tognini aboard the shuttle exchanged greetings with Haignere. Tognini said, "Mir from Columbia. I hear you." The reply came, "This is Mir space station speaking, this is Jean-Pierre." The two French space travelers then conversed in their native language. Jean-Pierre then suggested handing the conversation over to the two commanders. Eileen Collins, the first woman to command a space shuttle, exchanged a few greetings with her Mir counterpart, cosmonaut Viktor Afanasyev. Afanasyev said in broken English, "You are the first woman commander of a shuttle crew." Collins replied, "Hello Victor, this is Eileen. Dobrey-dien." Jean-Pierre assisted with translating, "Victor is listening, he wanted to congratulate you." Collins replied, "Spaseeba". [Sp?] NASA has a .WAV file of Eileen and Viktor at the world wide web site http://shuttle.nasa.gov/gallery/audio/shuttle/sts-93/wave/congrats.wav that provides a "congratulations" sound bite of the radio contact. Amateur Radio operator John Nickel, who helped coordinate the contacts commented, "It came as a nice surprise to us when Eileen greeted her fellow space travelers in Russian." Collins worked with Russian cosmonauts on her previous two space flights, STS-63 which made a close approach to Mir and STS-84 which featured the sixth docking with the Russian space station. Also on Mir is cosmonaut Sergei Avdeev who flew to Mir with Tognini in 1992. They exchanged greetings in Russian. All together three languages were used during the 10-minute contact -- French, Russian, and English. NASA flies Amateur Radio on the shuttle primarily as an educational outreach project, permitting astronauts to talk to schools. Russia flies Amateur Radio aboard Mir primarily as an off-hours recreational activity. Amateur Radio equipment will be installed on the International Space Station on the STS-101 mission scheduled for December 1999. More information about the Space Amateur Radio Experiment - SAREX - on the STS-93 shuttle flight is available on the worldwide web at http://garc.gsfc.nasa.gov/~kc6rol/sts93.html Submitted by Pat Kilroy, WD8LAQ, for Will Marchant, KC6ROL, and the SAREX Working Group. /EX ==================================================================== Patrick L. Kilroy WK SSPP Hitchhiker I&T Lead Engineer Phone: 301-286-1984 NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Fax: 301-286-1673 Building 5, Mail Code 568 E-mail: pat.kilroy@gsfc.nasa.gov Greenbelt, Maryland 20771 Web: http://sspp.gsfc.nasa.gov ==================================================================== Visit SimSat at http://simsat.gsfc.nasa.gov ---- Via the sarex mailing list at AMSAT.ORG courtesy of AMSAT-NA. To unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe sarex" to Majordomo@amsat.org