SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-323.01 HR AMSAT NEWS SERVICE BULLETIN 323.01 FROM AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD NOVEMBER 19, 1995 TO ALL RADIO AMATEURS BT BID: $ANS-323.01 Hams Contact Atlantis/Mir Astronauts The SAREX Astronauts have been very active on voice this mission. The SAREX team has received numerous reports of hams making contact with the STS-74 crew on this joint Shuttle/MIR mission. It should be noted that Canadian Astronaut Chris Hadfield, KC5RNJ, received his Canadian Amateur License last week. His Canadian callsign is VA3OOG. He has used this callsign on several passes other North America; particularly when the Shuttle traverses over Canada. Dozens of reports have been received of amateurs who have made successful voice contacts with the crew aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis and the Mir Space Station Complex. The contacts with the Shuttle were on a downlink frequency of 145.84 MHz with uplinks of either 144.45 or 144.47 MHz. The two spacecraft were docked together Wednesday until early Saturday morning. Earlier this week, the Atlantis astronauts completed 5 scheduled ham radio contacts with US students as part of the Shuttle Amateur Radio EXperiment or SAREX. These groups included students from Franklin Junior High School in Pocatello, Idaho, Norwalk County schools in Connecticut, Lake Street Elementary School in Crown Point, Indiana, Round Lake-area schools in Illinois, and Quimby Oak Junior High School in San Jose, California. The students were assisted by their local Amateur Radio clubs and many AMSAT SAREX volunteers. Amateurs trying to make random contacts with the astronauts should be aware the crew is using separate receive and transmit frequencies as noted earlier. Do not transmit on the shuttle's downlink frequency. Transmit only when the shuttle is within range of your station, and when the astronauts are on-the-air. The astronaut's call signs are KB5AWP, KC5NRI, N5SCW, KC5ACR, and KC5RNJ. There is no hardware to support packet radio contacts from the shuttle during this flight. QSL cards and reports may be sent to ARRL EAD, STS-74 QSL, 225 Main Street, Newington, CT 06111-1494, USA. Include the following information in your QSL or report: STS-74, date, time in UTC, frequency and mode (FM voice). In addition, you must also include a SASE using a large, business-sized envelope (#10) if you wish to receive a card. The Greater Norwalk Amateur Radio Club in Norwalk, CT has generously volunteered to manage the cards for this mission. The shuttle landing is scheduled at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida for November 20, 1995 at 1734 UTC. Satellite: STS-74 Catalog number: 23714 Epoch time: 95322.77562522 = (18-Nov-95 18:36:54.01 UTC) Element set: 108 Inclination: 51.6435 deg RA of node: 103.3797 deg Space Shuttle Flight STS-74 Eccentricity: .0009082 Keplerian element set JSC-108 Arg of perigee: 268.3215 deg from NASA flight Day 7 vector Mean anomaly: 91.6877 deg Mean motion: 15.75683811 rev/day Gil Carman Decay rate: 4.6573e-04 rev/day^2 NASA Johnson Space Center Epoch rev: 99 Checksum: 328 Note: This element set is valid after the last orbit adjust burn, which was performed on November 18 at 15:58 UTC Sat, 18 Nov 1995 ANS thanks Bob Inderbitzen, NQ1R of ARRL, Frank Bauer KA3HDO and Gil Carman for this information. /EX SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-323.02 MIR STATION UPGRADE PLANNED HR AMSAT NEWS SERVICE BULLETIN 323.02 FROM AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD NOVEMBER 19, 1995 TO ALL RADIO AMATEURS BT BID: $ANS-323.02 AMSAT.ORG Mailing List and Remailing Services AMSAT-NA (the Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation in North America) operates the Internet host AMSAT.ORG to provide for efficient communications between people interested in the amateur satellite program. At this time two services are provided: a message remailing service and a mailing list service. In addition, the Internet host WWW.AMSAT.ORG provides interactive access to a variety of information related to the amateur radio satellite program. Use your Web browser program (e.g., Mosaic) to access the URL . Anonymous FTP is available on FTP.AMSAT.ORG. This archive contains much of the same information as the WWW server. In addition, various files and programs are available for anonymous FTP. To access the archive, FTP to FTP.AMSAT.ORG, use the username "anonymous", and give your email address as the password. Look in the amsat subdirectory. This is a relatively new archive, so the host FTP.UCSD.EDU still has lots of files not available there. The message remailing service permits users to send each other mail on the Internet without keeping track of each other's Internet address. The remailing service allows each user to receive mail sent to the address callsign@amsat.org, where callsign is that user's amateur radio callsign, or other unique identifier. Mail sent to that address will be routed first to the AMSAT.ORG host at UCSD in San Diego, then remailed from AMSAT.ORG to the network address specified by the user. In most cases, this process delays the message by only a very few minutes. The mailing list service groups subscribers into mailing lists to receive certain types of messages. There are public mailing lists available to anyone, and private mailing lists available only to certain people (for example, AMSAT Board of Directors members or PACSAT command stations). Currently the following public mailing lists exist: ANS AMSAT News Service This mailing list carries official news releases from the AMSAT News Service. These messages are posted in a form suitable for direct posting to a packet radio BBS system. Each message contains a Bulletin Identifier (BID), which permits the message to be introduced into the packet network at many places without resulting in duplicate bulletins at any BBS. The primary purpose of this mailing list is to distribute ANS bulletins for redistribution (via the packet net or on AMSAT voice nets), but individuals may also subscribe for their own use. If your local packet BBS doesn't seem to get the ANS bulletins reliably, you are encouraged to post them yourself. Only authorized AMSAT News Service personnel may send messages to the ANS mailing list. AMSAT-BB AMSAT bulletin board This mailing list carries general AMSAT information. This information may NOT be suitable in content for transmission via amateur radio, so automatic reposting of AMSAT-BB messages to packet radio BBS's is discouraged. The purpose of this mailing list is to provide a forum for general discussion of any satellite-related topic. Anyone may send messages to the AMSAT-BB mailing list. Simply address your message to amsat-bb@amsat.org, and it will be automatically forwarded to all subscribers to the AMSAT-BB mailing list. Editors of publications should ask permission of the sender before publishing anything seen in AMSAT-BB elsewhere, unless the posting was obviously a public press release. However, posters should realize that anything posted to AMSAT-BB is essentially public. KEPS Keplerian Elements mailing list This mailing list carries official postings of Keplerian element sets for satellites of interest to radio amateurs. Like the ANS bulletins, these messages are posted in a form suitable for direct posting to a packet radio BBS. Only authorized AMSAT News Service personnel may send messages to the KEPS mailing list. NASAINFO NASA related information mailing list This mailing list contains information about current and planned NASA space missions. Be forewarned: at times this mailing list delivers many large messages. SAREX Shuttle Amateur Radio Experiment mailing list This mailing list contains information and press releases pertaining to SAREX missions. To obtain any of these services, just send a message to the address listserv@amsat.org This address may be reached from CompuServe MAIL as: >INTERNET:listserv@amsat.org For the moment, the maintenance of the AMSAT.ORG mailing lists and remailing aliases is done manually. Later, this service will probably be automated and you will have to follow a strict message format. For now, you may send requests in free format. They will usually be processed within a few days. In general, you will not receive an explicit reply to your request. Be sure you specify: 1. Which mailing list(s) you want to receive 2. Your callsign, if any 3. The Internet address to be used, if different from the one in your From: header. You should not send messages about your subscriptions to any of the mailing lists. Send them to listserv@amsat.org instead. This includes questions, requests for changes, requests for information about mailing services, and complaints. The list of amateurs who may be reached via the message remailing service may be obtained by requesting the "address book". Note that the address book as distributed contains only the callsigns of the available addressees, not their actual Internet addresses. The address book is updated occasionally, and does not necessarily contain the very latest information. You may request to be added to the list, to be deleted from the list, or to have your Internet address changed on the list. Please include your callsign if you have one. If you don't have a callsign, that's OK, but please say so. If you have more than one Internet address you want to have available on the AMSAT.ORG remailer, you may so specify. For instance, if you have a regular Internet address and a CompuServe account, you may appear in the address book as both w1xyz and w1xyz-cis. Mail sent to w1xyz would go to your Internet address, and mail sent to w1xyz-cis would go to CompuServe. MCImail accounts have the form w1xyz-mci, and so on. You may also subscribe or unsubscribe to any of the public mailing lists described above. Send a message to listserv@amsat.org, specifying clearly which mailing list(s) you want to add or drop, and giving your callsign if you have one. When you subscribe to a mailing list, you will automatically be added to the remailing service as well, because the mailing lists are maintained by callsign. If you have more than one address listed in the remailing service, please indicate which one(s) you want the mailing list messages sent to. Additional mailing lists, public or private, can be set up as needed. Send mail to listserv@amsat.org for details. Again, please remember to send administrative requests (such as "unsubscribe" or "subcribe") to listserv@amsat.org, NOT to the mailing list address. Questions about any service offered by AMSAT.ORG may be directed to listserv@amsat.org as well. ANS thanks Paul Williamson KB5MU for this information. /ex SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-323.03 HR AMSAT NEWS SERVICE BULLETIN 323.03 FROM AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD NOVEMBER 19, 1995 TO ALL RADIO AMATEURS BT BID: $ANS-323.03 QSLs From the Robots In answer to several questions regarding obtaining a QSL for contacts with the RS Robots, VE1AOE passes along the following information from Andrey Mironov the operator at RS3A: DF4XW is manager for RS Robots and also for RS3A. One can also QSL direct, using an envelope, to: Andrey Mironov, Ul.V-Voloshinoj, d.11, kv.72 station Perlowskaya, 141014 , Moscow region, Russia. The packet address is RK3KPK@RK3KP.MSK.RUS.EU or RS3A@RS3A.MSK.RUS.EU ANS thanks Donald Roland VE1AOE for this information. /EX