Hams in Space!

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Number 12 on your FHdbICk n rc! Hams in Space! SAREX II, the nextgeneration. by Philip Chien A II :4 1a.m. on December 2, the night sky lit up over Florida with a spectacular display of flame and smoke as the Space Shuttle Col umbia headed for orbit. After a series of delays (caused mainly by a pcrstsra nt hyd rogen fuel leak). STS-35 and SA REX 11 -0 1 was finally o n its way! STS ·35's primary miss ion was 10 carry NASA's Astro-t spacelab with three ultraviolet telescopes to observe the universe in ways never viewed befo re . Operating NASA's own Goddard Spaceflight Cente r 's Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope CU lT) was payload specialist Ron Parise WA4SIR. In 1978 un asrronomcr Ron, a ham since 1962, was completing his grad uate studies at the University of Florida, and by 1980 he was pan ofthe UIT learn. Little did Ron realize then that he 'd be flying with the UIT instrument he helped develop. The UIT is best described as a so phistica ted tel ephoto camera with super-sensitive film and a violet filter. Imagine a telephoto ca m era with a field of view 2S% wider than the full moon with ultra-lowlight film with an effective ISO (ASAI o f a couple ofhu ndred thou sand (in compariso n with the 100 400 film you'd normally purchase). It has a filte r so violet the human eye can't see it. further into ultraviolet than Hubble 's capabilities . Also, instead of an 18 or 36 exposure roll of film , you ha ve a film pack with over J()(X) exposures of 70mm fil m~ That's one heck o f a telephoto camera! SAREX II Photo B. Mission commander Vance Brand talks withfamify mem- hers via the SAREX 2 meter link. Photo courtesy ofNASA. The launch of the Astra I mission marked the beginning ofa new se ries of SAREX (Shuttle Amateur Radio EXperiment) nights . The primary m issio n o f thi s SA REX was to communicate with a number o f classrooms across the U.S., as well as to pro vide hams worldw ide a way of directly con- 54 73 Amateuf Radio Today . March, 1991 necting up to the shuttle via a packet radio robot. In addition, Ron recommended trying shipto-ship contact between Columbia and the Soviet space station Mir . He said, " The idea came to me some time ago, just because he re was Mir ope rating 2 meters and we were going to be operating 2 meters. and we ought to talk to each other... Any Columbia-to-Mi r contact would be Photo A. Ron Parise WA4SIR working the world from the SAREX operating position onboard STS-35. Phoro courtesy ofNASA. much eas ier from the Sov iet side than from the U.S. because Mir 's ham shack includes a 25 watt transceiver and an outside antenna, while the Columbia has an inside antenna and 5 walt transceiver . Contact between the IWO vehicles is complicated by two factors. The most obvious problem, the Doppler shift, actually turns out to be fairly insignificant. More complicated is the motion of the two spacecraft. Since the spacecraft are in different orb its at different altitudes. and traveling in different di rections, the range between the spacecraft and the line of sight angle changes quickly: One minute you ' re several thousand kilometers fro m each other, the next you' re right next to each other, and then you' re several thou sand miles away again. Low Inclination Unlike the earl ier ham radio shuttle nights, Astra was launched into an orbit with an inclination of 28 .5 deg rees , the typical orbit for most shutt le fli ghts . Spacecraft lau nched to the east gai n ex tra payload capacity due to the Earth 's rotation: A spacecra ft launched due east can carry the most payload; the orbit is inclined to the equator at the same angle as the latitude of the launch site . The end result is that Astro flew no further north of the equator than the KSC launch site, and at the same latitude to the south, 28 .5 degrees. The Spacelab I m ission w ith O wen Garriott W5LFL and Spacelab 2 with Tony England W00RE flew into higher incli nation orbi ts for better Earth observation capabilities, the tradeoff being less payload. The iro ny is that the Sov iet space statio n Mir is in a 51.6 degree orbit, halfway between the Spacelab 2 and Spacelab 1 orbits. Had Astra been launched into a higher inclined orbit, longer opportu nities for Mir contacts cou ld have been possible.
Photo C. Mall Flagg, a senior at New Prairie High School in New Carlisle, indianaand Jim Fonte KK9T (r) make the first school contact with WA4SIR in the shuttle Columbia. Teacher David Wa.{hburn WB9QJL (I) looks on during this historic contact. Photo by Steven Peterka WD9FGZ ofthe News Dispatch . Due to the 28 .5 degree o rb it and Ron's schedule, he was awak e primarily when flying o ver Australia . South America. and Southern A frica ; howev er. Asrro's altitude made it possible for most continental U.S . hams to contact SA REX within line-of-sight requirements, even though it was at relatively low angles. Schools and Packet Since the 1985 Spacelab 2 fligh t, many improvements have been made to the space ham equipment, expanding the capabilities for SA REX contacts. For example , the original antenna on Spacelabs I and 2 could o nly be used in the overhead wi ndows, which interfered with Earth observations. The ne ..... antenna (made by the Motorola Amateur Rad io Club in Shaumburg, Ill inois) mounts in a side windo w where it's out of the way and doesn 't req uire any pa rticular orien tation . Ron did ha ve minor problems moving the antenna across the flight deck, crowded as it was with cre w and equipment. to other windo.....s, but he managed to do it without interfering with Astro operations. In this latest mission , relay links with learns of Austral ian, Sou th American. and South African hams relayed the SA REX signals back to classrooms via an elaborate te lephone/ radio linkup. Most im port ant for computer-o riented hams was the addition of the packet mode . includi ng the capability to operate SA REX in its robot mode co ntinuously du ring Ron ' s shi ft without interfering wilh his other responsibilities . The packet TNC was a Heath HK-21 with special robot software written by Howie Goldstei n N2WX . As it turned out. Astro was launched j ust a couple of hours before the Soviets launched their TM- I I mission with Victor Afanashev and Musa Manarov, a handle fam ilia r world- wide with hams. He flew a year-long Mir mission in 1988 as U2MIRlUV3AM. Record Numbers in Space The dual launches on December 2, 1990. resulted in 12 people in orbit at the same time in three separa te spacecraft: seven Ame ricans aboard Columbia , two Soviet long-term cosmonaut s fin ishing their mission aboard Mir , two Soviet long-term cosmonauts starting thei r mission, and a Japanese journalist aboard the TM-II Soyuz spacecraft. On th e second day of the Columbia's mission , Mir passed within 50 km . Mission specialists Jeff Hoffman and Mike Lounge said that Mir looked like a moving star. Unfortuna tely. they couldn't attempt a 2 meier contact because the Soviet c rew was busy performing their post-docking tasks . Since contact would be possible Mir later in the mission, the attempt was rescheduled. First Contacts While the Astra crew didn't get a chance to tal k 10 Mir , thousands ofground-based hams around the world were able 10 communicate with Ron Parise aboard the Columbia . Hu n dreds of students, teachers, and individuals spoke with him directly during briefcontacts. Ron used some of his spare time , before sleep and after waking, and before goi ng on 12 hour duty , to co mmunicate with the world. He ope rated SAREX ev ery time he had a couple of spare minutes. After Ron got a chance 10 set up the SA REX gear. he prepared for his first voice contact as he passed back over the Kennedy Space Center launch site. His first vo ice QSO was with NZ8W, a ham operating a 45 walt ca r rig outside a hotel ncar the launch site. Appropriately , NZ8W happe ns to be Henry Parise , Ron's dad . Due to the tight cre w schedule , the other astronauts didn't get a chance to use SAREX much except for pre-planned pho ne patches with their families . One of Ron' s more unusual voice contacts was with mission manager Jac k Jo ne s KC4 IWU. Normally mission managers only tal k 10 the crew through the spacecraft controllers and capcoms, but Jack went over to the Marshall Spaceflight Center's ham shac k. and talked with Ron for a couple of mi nutes about how well things were going, and how proud the ground team was of the job the crew was doing . One luck y young ham in Hawaii, newly upgraded to Technician, co ntacted Ron. Thoroughly enjoying himself, Ron talked for a couple of minutes about acti vities aboard the shuttle . Unfortunately, due to tech nical Photo D. Charley Shumaker N8IKP. Barbara Curry N4TCC andRon Curry WA4GSS (standing left to right) discuss the j oys of amateur radio with students of several schools from the Huntington , West Virginia. region just prior to making contact with S1'5-35 during 2-way session number3. Photo courtesy ofRon Curry WA4GSS. 73 Amateur RadiO Today. Ma rch,1991 SS
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I • • Hams in Space!
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