• Radio Amateurs to Swap Spots on International Space Station (ISS) Crew

    From ARRL de WD1CKS@VERT/WLARB to QST on Wednesday, May 30, 2018 17:26:42
    05/30/2018

    One radio amateur now onboard the International Space Station will be heading home on June 3, while another will take his place on the crew a few days later.

    Flight Engineer Scott Tingle, KG5NZA, will join Expedition 55 Commander Anton Shkaplerov and Flight Engineer Norishige Kanai in returning to Earth on the Soyuz MS-07 spacecraft after 168 days on station. A few days later, another trio of space travelers - Alexander Gerst, KF5ONO, Sergey Prokopyev, and Serena Au¤¢n-Chancellor - will head to the ISS in a Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft.

    In a traditional change-of-command ceremony on June 1, Shkaplerov will hand over command of the station to NASA's Drew Feustel, officially starting Expedition 56. In addition to Feustel, Ricky Arnold, KE5DAU, and Oleg Artemyev will remain on station.

    This will be the "Horizons[1]" mission for Gerst, of the European Space Agency, who will assume command of the ISS for the second half of his duty tour. Gerst, who first served on the ISS in 2014, likely will use the call sign DP0ISS for any Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS[2]) activities.


    [1] http://blogs.esa.int/alexander-gerst/2018/04/12/overview-of-the-horizons-mission/
    [2] http://www.ariss.org/

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