An International Space Station Expedition 14 ARISS school contact has been planned with students at the Northlawn and St Anthony's Schools, Streator, Illinois, USA on Tuesday, January 16, 2007. The event is scheduled to begin at approximately 17:28 UTC.

Station KB9UPS in Illinois will call NA1SS, directly, at approximately 17:28 UTC.

Streator, Illinois is a small city of 14,000 located approximately 90 miles southwest of Chicago. Several people of note called Streator home at various times, including Honey Boy Evans, who wrote the tune "In the Good Old Summertime", and Clyde Tombaugh.

Northlawn School is committed to excellence. Students in the 6th through 8th grade have opportunities to continually expand their knowledge. Our robotics program challenges young minds to create an autonomous robot. This year was the seventh year of robotic participation in the FIRST Lego League Challenge. Selected students visit the Challenger Learning Center and they also compete with their science projects and science papers at regional and state level. Technology is a top priority at the school where graphing calculators and scientific probes make math and science come alive! We are also most proud of our 2002 Scholastic Bowl state champions!

St. Anthony School in Streator, IL is a parochial school serving 331 students in grades preschool through Grade 8. St. Anthony's claim to fame as a school centers on Pluto. The students initiated a letter-writing campaign to persuade the IAA to keep Pluto's status as a planet, which resulted in the students and their social studies teacher being recognized with an entry in the Congressional Record in Washington, DC. Clyde Tombough, the astronomer who discovered Pluto, is a native of Streator.

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

[Exact student order has not been finalized and may change. Students range in age from pre-school to 8th.]

Northlawn questions:

1. How does it feel to know that there’s 200 miles between you and the Earth?
2. What is your greatest hope for the future of space technology?
3. Did you want to be an astronaut when you were little?
4. What is some of the equipment you would use in your daily work on the space station and how is it used to help you?
5. Would water float in space?
6. What was your first reaction when you saw the stars outside your space station window?
7. What are some of the hardest challenges on a space walk?
8. What if someone breaks a bone in space, what do you do to fix it?
9. Do you ever have free time? If so, what do you do during it?
10. When you are outside the space station, do you feel like you would drift off?
11. It is obvious that this is a once in a lifetime experience, but what kind of disadvantages does living on board the space station have?

St. Anthony School – questions for Cmdr. Alegria

1. Is working outside in space really like the training you did in the pool?
2. Being in space can be lonely. What kinds of things do you bring on the ISS to remind you of home?
3. When you are on the shuttle going through the earth’s atmosphere, do you control the shuttle’s rockets or do the people on earth control them?
4. Can the ISS be hit by space debris and still be able to function?
5. Is it bad for your body to go into space and come back many times?
6. How do you store enough oxygen to survive so long in space?

These students can ask questions if time would allow:

1. Can you really see the Grand Canyon and the Great Wall of China from space?
2. Is it difficult sleeping when you’re strapped in? Can you turn at all?

Northlawn questions:

1. What is the most important and or interesting thing that you have learned from being an astronaut?

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).