An International Space Station Expedition 14 ARISS school contact has been planned with students at the Boulder Hill Elementary School, Montgomery, Illinois, USA on Tuesday, March 6, 2007. The event is scheduled to begin at approximately 16:06 UTC.

Station W9BHB in Illinois will call NA1SS at approximately 16:06 UTC.

Boulder Hill Elementary School in Montgomery, Illinois has been scheduled for an Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) contact . To prepare for the contact, fourth and fifth graders involved in the school’s Ham Radio Club have been engaged in science and communications experiments and have used amateur radio to speak with others locally, nationally, and internationally.

This important contact will be integrated in the school’s curricula through science and art activities including the investigations of the Earth in space, communication, and the International Space Station. Kindergarteners will be focusing on the planet Earth, first graders on Astronauts (Sunita Williams), second graders on Air transportation, third graders on solar energy, fourth graders on satellites/communication, and fifth graders on the ISS.

Students from the school’s Amateur Radio Club will be participating in the contact during an all school assembly. Members of the local amateur radio community will assist the school station W9BHB. Also, local government officials and the media have been invited to the event.

Plans include audio feeds to the other schools in the district as well as Internet, Echolink and IRLP.

We have a teacher at Boulder Hill who will be retiring this year after 35 years in the classroom, all at Boulder Hill Elementary. She is a real inspiration and is loved by students, parents, teachers and administration alike. Her name is Maureen Jorgensen. Please help us in congratulating Maureen.

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

1. What is the most challenging task you do everyday?
2. How long have you wanted to be an astronaut?
3. What is your favorite thing to do in space?
4. If I wanted to become an astronaut, what type of classes would I need to take in school?
5. If you weren’t an astronaut, what would you be?
6. How hard is it to dock your spacecraft to the station?
7. What happens if you get seriously hurt, do you have medical training?
8. What was your favorite type of helicopter to fly?
9. What kind of clothes do you wear in space?
10. Have you ever seen a storm on a different planet?
11. Is the food you eat up there good?
12. How many times have you gone into space?
13. How did you become an astronaut?
14. What was the experience of launching like?
15. How much oxygen do you have when you do a spacewalk?
16. What’s the scariest thing you have ever done in space?
17. What kind of games do you play in space?
18. How do you brush your teeth in space?
19. How do you take showers in space?
20. What other planets can you see?
21. How long does it take to get out of the atmosphere?
22. Do your ears pop when you go into space?
23. Have you ever seen space rocks?

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).