Last Saturday was a big day for area scouts!
The 2nd Cottam scouts along with their friends and fellow scouts of 1st Leamington and 3rd Essex came together to speak with American astronaut Sunita Williams who currently works aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
This exciting experience happened as a result of a chance meeting between the scouts and a local Veteran last year.
It was November 2023 and the 2nd Cottam Scouts were busy with one of their Veteran gravestone cleaning events in Kingsville. Scouter Dan Ireland of Cottam put out a request to the Royal Canadian Legion for Veterans to come out and meet the youth.
One of those Veterans was Bruce Peacock.
Bruce, a former member of the Scouts himself, has had a long career as an aviator and an Aero Space technician who worked on the CANADARM. He is also a very experienced ham radio operator.
In addition to his role as president of the South Point Radio Club in Leamington, Bruce has also been spending his retirement years encouraging youth to develop interests in Amateur radio, Aviation and the Aero Space industry.
It was during the event at Greenhill Cemetery in Kingsville that Bruce suggested to Dan the idea of the scouts making contact with the International Space Station (ISS) via ham radio.
Planning began and by January 2024 the application was submitted for a fall contact event with the ISS.
Bruce acting as the contact coordinator, worked with 2nd Cottam Scouting group commissioner Doug Potier and Brian Jackson, a 6th grader teacher in Airdrie, Alberta and co-founder of Airdrie Space Science Club who arranged with NASA for this event to take place. Jackson is also an avid ham radio operator.
Over the last six months, the team narrowed down when and where the ISS would be in order to pinpoint a precise time for contact. The ISS currently flies on a southwest to northeast heading, whizzing along at around 28 000 kilometers an hour.
The team also worked with local scouts to select those who would have the great privilege of directly asking questions for Astronaut Williams via ham radio.
The plan was to establish ham radio contact with the ISS as it flew more than 350 kilometers above the Earth toward Italy.
On the day of the big event, the contact with the ISS was made using an Amateur Radio tele-bridge network, a worldwide network of amateur radio ground stations.
The amateur radio ground station that established contact with the ISS was in Casale Monferrato, Italy, and was operated by Claudio Ariotti and his team.
The scouts were able to speak with astronaut Sunita Williams and ask her a number of questions about life on the International Space Station and about space in general.
This was all accomplished due to the participation of ARISS – Amateur Radio on the International Space Station. ARISS is a consortium of ham radio volunteers from 9 nations that develop and operate the amateur radio station on the international space station.
The scouts had an amazing afternoon of learning which also included a prepared video tour of the ISS led by astronaut Sunita Williams. This once-in-a-lifetime opportunity is sure to be an enduring memory for all who participated.
Photos provided by 2nd Cottam Scouting