The ISS has radios on board that allow amateur radio operators to send and receive APRS messages, talk to other hams via their built-in FM repeater or to receive SSTV images. They also have amateur TV stuff on board but I have not explored this yet. Crew members with an amateur radio license can pick up the mic of the radio that acts as a FM repeater to make contacts with other hams on the earth.
You can contact the ISS via a handheld setup (FM radio and a yagi antenna in your hand) or with a stationary setup like mine: https://rz01.org/leo-sat-ground-station-v3/
A good few years ago I had a crack as using the ISS's crossband repeater when it was on and could hear myself clearly with a Kenwood TH-F7E and home-made dual-band crossed dipole.
Unfortunately no-one else could work me, because they'd boosted the satellite's orbit, the TLEs hadn't been updated, and so everyone with a nice motorised antenna positioner was aiming at the wrong part of the sky.
Me standing in my back garden pointing roughly in the direction of the fast-moving bright spot? Nah that worked perfectly :-D
Five years ago ARISS-UK pre-arranged a connection between the school and astronaut Mark Vande Hei on one of the ISS flyovers. Various students got to ask questions directly to Mark in orbit. It was the first contact between ISS and a deaf school.
https://www.arrl.org/news/ariss-confirms-october-12-as-date-...
Most of the students have either some degree of hearing or use cochlear implants. I think nearly all, if not all, students use either hearing aids or cochlear implants.
The classes are very small (eg 5-6 max usually), students are arranged in a U-shape around the teacher so they can read lips. And there’s a special wireless broadcast system so the teacher wears a microphone and sends the audio directly to hearing aids or cochlear implants.
Regarding deaf culture, most of the students use BSL on their own outside class, and my daughter learned BSL from her friends there that grew up with it. Coming from a mainstream primary, she found “her people” here, discovered deaf culture and a community that shares the same struggles she faces.
The idea is that by teaching in BSL the students are further restricted in their ability to function in a hearing society.
I’m curious if you are deaf yourself, or work with the deaf. All the teachers at the school are trained teachers of the deaf, some are even deaf themselves. And I haven’t heard any complaints about the aural nature of the learning (except from the reservations of a few parents before sending their kids there, and I don’t think any of these parents regrets this after their children started there.)
NASA also used to coordinate telephone-based contact (maybe they still do? not sure). They'd simply patch the phone call in to radio equipment that they acquired and operated for this purpose. Confirmed beforehand out of personal interest though: it was still over the ham bands.
Something really amazing happens when kids are given an opportunity to experience something like that: science goes from being a largely theoretical exercise to having some amount of practical applicability. The kids that got to actually _talk_ on the radio were incredibly curious and eager to learn as much as they could about everything. They wanted to know how radio works. They wanted to know more about orbital mechanics and how we know where to point the antenna (to the point of actually _asking_ to learn the math). They wanted to know how big the ISS was and how we even got it to orbit (which led to some model rocketry-related topics).
I imagine that it was very difficult to justify the expense of acquiring and transporting heavy amateur radio equipment to the space station (even if you're just thinking about the cost of putting the equipment into orbit - the cost is (pardon the pun) astronomical), but this kind of stuff _matters_. Making science accessible to children in a way that isn't just preparing them for the next standardized test _matters_.
Lots of students have basically zero interest in that stuff. With the exception of the usual group of nerds.
Radio call at a school with an Arctic research station? The organizers from our local club even begged members to come.
I should re-review those exam questions; I might be licensed to do a lot more than I know I can.
You also bring up an interesting time in ham radio history that a lot of newer hams are largely unaware of; WWII. Amateur radio thrives on communication globally, so anyone from the US could talk to anyone from any other country. The need for restrictions of the bands became obvious in the years leading up to the US entering the war, with various countries that were once accessible by radio going dark. The US logically followed suit, but operators were still monitoring.
There's a great article on this time in amateur radio history here; https://bw.billl.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Radio-Histor...
Approximately anyone can.
https://gjcp.net/mp3s/iss-friday1106.mp3
There's a video somewhere on Youtube with another recording from Hampshire, just a short distance south of the school but still too far too hear them. It's crazy hearing the two different recordings of the same thing :-)
Possibly explained by moon landing deniers being too stupid to operate radio equipment.
[1] A bunch of students at https://satlab.agh.edu.pl
The closest I have done is picking up the SSTV signals with one of my HTs. I learned a lot doing it. It was crazy just how directional the rubber ducky antenna was even on a crappy Baofeng. Turning the radio 90 degrees went from 0 signal to crystal clear signal. I thought it was cool, and even my mom was impressed. Lol
