It took several tries until, finally, a faint voice crackled over the speakers. This wasn’t your average phone call, though, but a connection between local students and an astronaut with the International Space Station through the use of amateur/ham radio.
Thursday, students with the Bellefontaine High School Amateur Radio Club (W8BCS) made contact with astronaut Kayla Barron, a mission specialist on NASA SpaceX Crew-3.
Nine Bellefontaine elementary, intermediate and middle students were chosen to ask Barron space questions.
Barron is also a member of the Artemis team, which has been tasked with sending the next man and first woman to the moon in 2024.
With the station only in frequency range for 10 minutes, the students moved quickly through their turns at the mic. In that time, they learned Barron and her team were 250 miles above the earth, the station orbits our planet about 16 times a day, and some of the effects of being in space over weeks, even months, include exposure to radiation, muscle atrophy and eyesight changes.
This special interaction didn’t happen overnight. “We started preparing about a year and a half ago,” said Gary Kauffman, president of the Champaign Logan Amateur Radio Club (W8FTV), which provided equipment and helped set things up.
“It’s been lots of emails, lots of phone calls, lots of late nights. I was even here last night, tuning the antenna to track the space station.”
BHS TV production students operated a livestream of the event. It can be found on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6t5ZQOw2j68
(The radio contact with Barron takes place at the 22:10 mark.)
Before the radio connection, the organizers played recorded interviews with two BHS alumni, including 2007 graduate Tim Smith, who’s now a NASA research engineer.
For more information about the ARISS program, visit www.ariss.org
For more details on the BHS Amateur Radio Club, go to https://www.w8bcs.org/
Read more about Barron at https://www.nasa.gov/astronauts/biographies/barron-kayla