SB SPACE @ ARL $ARLS002
ARLS002 New Amateur Radio antenna installed in space!

ZCZC AS02  
QST de W1AW  
Space Bulletin 002  ARLS002
From ARRL Headquarters  
Newington, CT  January 15, 2002
To all radio amateurs

SB SPACE ARL ARLS002
ARLS002 New Amateur Radio antenna installed in space.

Amateur Radio on the International Space Station got a new antenna
January 14, thanks to a spacewalk by Expedition 4 crew members Yuri
Onufrienko, RK3DUO, and Carl Walz, KC5TIE. Another of new ARISS ham
antenna--there are four in all--could be installed January 25.

''It was beautiful to watch,'' ARISS Board Chairman Frank Bauer,
KA3HDO, said. ''It went like clockwork, everything deploying just as
it was supposed to.''

While crewmate Dan Bursch, KD5PNU, operated the robotic arm and
monitored and videotaped the spacewalk--or EVA--from inside the ISS,
Onufrienko and Walz first relocated a Russian Strela cargo crane
used to maneuver equipment and spacewalkers. Then, they installed
the flexible-tape VHF-UHF Amateur Radio antenna on a handrail at the
end of the Zvezda Service Module--the crew's living quarters. The
new VHF-UHF antenna is the first one designed for and dedicated
specifically to support ARISS operations.

Installation of the new antenna on Zvezda paves the way for two
separate ham stations aboard Space Station Alpha. The ARISS initial
ham station gear--single-band hand-held transceivers for 2 meters
and 70 cm--now is installed in the Zarya Functional Cargo Block.
Tentative plans call for a 2-meter station to remain in Zarya, while
a second 70-cm station will be set up in Zvezda using the newly
installed antenna.

ARISS ARRL representative Rosalie White, K1STO, said she, too, was
pleased to see this phase of the project coming together. ''We
started all this in 1998--and now we have a permanent antenna on the
outside of the station,'' she said. ''Pretty cool.''

Bauer congratulated the ARISS international team for their
assistance in the antenna project. ''We have taken our ideas,
concepts and vision and transformed them into reality,'' he said.

ARISS is a collaboration of ARRL, AMSAT and NASA. For more
information, visit the ARISS Web site, http://ariss.gsfc.nasa.gov.
NNNN
/EX