Tennessee Catholic school students make contact with space station

Published: 2004-08-16

TULLAHOMA, Tenn. (CNS) -- Students from St. Paul the Apostle and Good Shepherd Catholic schools made history for Tennessee Aug. 10 when they made contact with the International Space Station. "My heart skipped when we first heard him," radio control operator Mike Boyea said of the initial voice contact he made with U.S. astronaut Lt. Col. Mike Fincke. Boyea, an avid ham radio hobbyist, and Mike Glennon, a technical specialist, helped organize the contact between the schoolchildren and the space station. Boyea is a parishioner at Good Shepherd in Winchester, and Glennon belongs to St. Paul the Apostle Parish in Tullahoma. Crew members on the International Space Station have amateur, or ham, radio as a constant companion, and regularly communicate with schools around the world during their mission. However, there has never been contact with a school in Tennessee. For about 10 minutes, as the space station passed from Baja, Calif., to New York, children from St. Paul and Good Shepherd were able to pose questions directly to Fincke. The space station, which travels 17,500 miles per hour at approximately 200 miles above the earth, makes one orbit around the earth approximately every 90 minutes.

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