Out of this world! Athlone students to talk to astronaut in space next week
Excitement is building at Athlone Community College as it prepares to make live contact with an astronaut on board the International Space Station, while it's orbiting the planet, next Monday afternoon (December 7).
The school is the only one in Ireland to have been selected for this remarkable opportunity, which involves a temporary amateur radio station being set up on the school grounds in order to beam a signal to the space station.
The big moment when local students get a chance to talk to a US astronaunt on board the satellite can be viewed live on YouTube on Monday (link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viVQBI4WzKs).
The build-up to the call will get underway from 1.30pm, with the call itself due to happen at around 2.50pm.
Planning for this initiative began a year ago and Laura Donnellan, the teacher coordinating the event, said the entire school was "excited for a once in a lifetime opportunity that both staff and students will not forget."
Depending on the strength of the signal, it's expected that students will be able to address questions to the astronaut on the space station for somewhere between 6 and 12 minutes.
"We have only between 6 and 12 minutes to get Athlone Community College on the astronomical map, but it’ll be long enough, hopefully, if we get a good connection," explained Laura.
"It's amazing when you think how far technology has come now that we - in a school here - are able to make direct contact with something that’s whizzing by Ireland at 27,000 km per hour. It’s mind-boggling, but also very exciting."
The link is being operated through the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station programme (ARISS).
Laura explained that this was a global programme, and Athlone Community College had to submit a very detailed application to be part of it.
A two-hour interview was one of the steps in this process, and Laura said the community college's strong emphasis on the STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths) contributed to its success in being chosen as the only Irish school to take part.
"Around 70% of the schools selected come from a home country of one of the astronauts on board the International Space Station (ISS). Considering we don’t have an Irish astronaut on board at the moment, it is a big deal to be selected, and a great achievement," she said.
The school's real-time earth-to-space contact will be established through amateur radio equipment which will beam a line-of-sight signal to the ISS.
The temporary amateur radio station being set up on the school grounds will include a tracking antenna, and a two-way radio system, which will allow students to speak directly with one of the astronauts who will be taking a break from duties and experiments on board the ISS to answer questions about space and life in space.
The ARISS ground station at Athlone Community College has been allocated the call sign EI1ISS (Echo India One India Sierra Sierra) by ComReg for this occasion.
The station will be operated by Irish members of ARISS Europe with support from the local amateur radio club in Athlone, the Shannon Basin Radio Club. A trial-run, and test of the equipment, took place recently, and thankfully all went well.
Students from the school, and from some local national schools, were invited to send in questions for the astronaut and Laura said the hundreds of questions received had now been whittled down to just 30.
"We have the 10 students selected to ask the questions on the day, but we probably won't get to all 30. It will depend on the timeframe we have," she said.
In the months building up to this event, the school has been delivering a series of events to prepare students and awaken a deeper interest in space and space travel.
"It is a whole school effort to build momentum ahead of this magnificent opportunity," said Laura, who added that the live link-up with the space station would be streamed to every classroom in the school.