An International Space Station Expedition 13 ARISS school contact has been planned with students at the Northeast Middle School, Clarksville, Tennessee, USA on Monday, 28 Aug 2006. The event is scheduled to begin at approximately 15:59 UTC.

Telebridge station VK4KHZ in Australia will call NA1SS at approximately 15:59 UTC.

Students will ask as many of the following questions as time allows:

1. Why did you want to become an astronaut and if you could choose another job what would it be?
2. Do you get lonely when you are there and your family isn’t with you?
3. How do you sleep on a bed while floating around?
4. What do you do if you have a medical emergency while you are up there?
5. How can you breathe in the space shuttle or on the space station without wearing a space suit?
6. If the Space Station is International, how many different nationalities are representing their countries and do you all speak one common language? If so, what language is it?
7. What different types of food do you eat on the International Space Station?
8. What would you do if you were outside making repairs and your line broke?
9. How do you talk from space down to the command center on earth?
10. How long will you be staying at the International Space Station?
11. Are the astronauts experimenting on plant survival rates at the space station?
12. What is going through your mind when you are in space?
13. How important is being physically fit in a weightless environment?
14. Are you at zero gravity the whole time you are up there or do you experience some gravity?
15. How do you eat in space without having gravity?
16. What is the maximum time limit you could stay at the International Space Station before you started having medical problems or muscle weakness?
17. Is it difficult to use the restroom on the International Space Station?
18. Is it scary to you when you’re coming in for a landing?
19. Why do you have to stir the oxygen tanks?
20. What type of research will you be doing at the Space Station?

The ARISS audio feed teams plan on feeding the audio from this contact into the EchoLink *AMSAT* (101 377) and *JK1ZRW* (277 208) servers and the IRLP Discovery Reflector 9010. We hope that all goes well and that we will have good two way audio levels available for our EchoLink and IRLP listeners.

Please note that there are automatic breaks in the audio transmission every 2.5 minutes during the event and while we listen to preparations going on for this contact. On the EchoLink system, we normally feed the audio during preparations for contacts, if the audio from the preparations is suitable for transmission into ham radio systems. Each audio break is approximately 1 second long. Please configure your systems to not time out during times of inactivity or ongoing audio transmissions.

For everyone's information and future reference. When any ARISS event is supported through the IRLP "Discovery" Reflector 9010, audio is automatically streamed to the Internet. It is then available via the "Discovery" Reflectors companion web site www.discoveryreflector.ca . Once on its main page, select "Audio Library" (left sidebar). The prompt to join the audio stream is posted at the top of this page. More directly the URL is as follows: www.discoveryreflector.ca:8000/listen.pls

Information about the next scheduled ARISS contact can be found at 'NextContact'.

ARISS is an international educational outreach program partnering the participating space agencies, NASA, Russian Space Agency, ESA, CNES, JAXA, and CSA, with the AMSAT and IARU organizations from participating countries.

ARISS offers an opportunity for students to experience the excitement of Amateur Radio by talking directly with crewmembers on-board the International Space Station. Teachers, parents and communities see, first hand, how Amateur Radio and crewmembers on ISS can energize youngsters' interest in science, technology, and learning. Further information on the ARISS program is available on the website www.rac.ca/ariss (graciously hosted by the Radio Amateurs of Canada).