Excerpted Results of the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) meeting at NASA Goddard 5-7 Dec 2002 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ WB4APR EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: It appears PCSAT2 was tentatively approved by ARISS to proceed (though we won't know the exact wording or limitations (if any) until the formal minutes. We also made many other contributions to the ARISS committee meeting and future project concepts. Because PCsat pushes the envelope of the Amateur Satellite Service on the International Space Station, we were tasked with developing a draft freuency planning doecument for the future of all applications within the ARISS perview. DETAILS: The PCsat2 Project Opportunity was presented to the ARISS delegates at the semi-annual meeting held this year at NASA Goddard. The 4 day meeting opened with the chairman noting some of the challenges in the coming year and one of the topics mentioned was the potential for external ISS experiments that may want to use the Amateur Satellite Service while pushing the envelope of what may or may not be appropriate for that service. By the time Friday came, the agenda was a half day behind and so the PCSAT2 presentation was moved to Saturday morning. To summarize the presentation, the hot issues of pecuniary interest, proprietary data, and DOD involvement immediately pushed many buttons and much comment was generated... PCSAT2 PRESENTATION: But after the initial response..., there seemed to be a general feeling of guarded optimism... We closed with the comment that what we needed from ARISS was an endorsement of the concept and that we also needed from AMSAT a statement in principle that the PCsat mission as presented was in fact within the rules and intent of the International rules for the Amateur Satellite Service. CONCLUSION: I think the way we organized the PCSAT2/MISSE5 experiment and prepared the communications design to fit within a fully compliant niche in the ITU rules was the key to the success of this approach, and in fact, could pave the way for many follow-on missions to the ISS using the MISSE experiment container. ARISS FREQUENCY PLANNING: We came away tasked with the job of working up a frequency planning document for all future ARISS missions, since PCSAT2 will be the first excursion beyond the very hard won international frequencies determined back in the l997 time frame. HF CONCEPT OF OPERATIONS: Further, seeing the Russian plans for adding HF frequencies and equipment to ARISS in 2003, we propsed a concept of operations that had not previously been considered. This concept of operations offers an order of magnitude better communications between the crew and schools on the ground by operating in full duplex, allowing the schools to observe ,if not directly participate, in any other school contacts, not just their own. FULL DUPLEX SCHOOL COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEM: A final contribution ... to the meeting was the observation that the long awaited full duplex communications system for school contacts did not have to wait until the future Phase2 hardware, but that there was sufficient transmitters and receivers on board right now to accompliesh this mission... ASTRONAUT-SCHOOL CONACT BACKLOG: THe ARISS Operations committee reported that the current school backlog for Astronaut to school communications was on the order of 2 years and growing longer. But with PCSAT-2, I was able to point out that the School-to-astronaut backlog could be improved by an order of magnitude by using the full duplex transponder on PCSAT2. to simply link school events to Astronauts at JSC "via" ISS instead of having to schedule and use up the very valuable time of the Astronatuts in space. To the school and the students, the geometry, and communications would be the same, but it could be done on many orbits, not just one every week or so because it used a larger pool of astronauts on the ground. THe meeting was a very rewarding event. Bob Bruninga USNA Satellite Lab 410-293-6417