Nova Scotia: Star Party - A Conversation With Outer Space

It was a typical misty morning on my early drive to Smiley Park, Nova Scotia. For a moment I regretted staying up until 3 am writing about horse racing in Moscow. But such is the life of a journalist.

No high winds from Hurricane Bill noted as of yet, but an worn tree lay across a telephone wire. The eroding back-roads leading to the park revealed only a few signs for directions, typical of Nova Scotia. If you were on the correct track, at the end an out-of-this-world event was about to unfold. The mist disappeared suddenly as the blue skies opened up at the Nova East Star Party.

Organized by the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Halifax Centre, and the Minas Astronomy Group, many smiling faces at the Star Party weekend were celebrating the International Year of Astronomy.

A group picture of the Amateur Astronomers firstly before the highly anticipated and broadcasted interview with Dr Robert Thirsk, on the International Space Station. 

The ISS travelling at 28,000 kilometers/hour, takes 90 minutes to fly over the entire Earth. This took months of preparation and paperwork and we were being given an opportune 10 minute window. There was no time for error. Would it go off without a hitch?

"One minute left before contact" Wayne Harasimovitch from AIR ISS called out. We all took our posts.

"International Space Station this is HARC(ham radio) calling.. do you copy?" THERE WAS NO ANSWER. Was there is the glitch? HARC repeated the same. Still no answer. Precious time was ticking away... Would we have contact? We kept our fingers crossed.   Twenty questions were waiting to be answered and only ten minutes total to reply before the ISS would disappear from range. After a quick check, HARC repeated a third time. The whirl of the ISS bellowed through the speaker, much to the relief of the Maritime crowd. It sounded like it was overhead, but nothing could be seen.

"Hello Dr Thirsk and thank you for being here." "
"Hello Nova Scotia", he replied, as we contained our excitement. Tingling with utter joy, I waited for my number to approach - #9.  It wasn't everyday one gets to talk to outer space. Soon I took my position.

"Здравствуйме, This is Sara. With all the space junk in orbit, how is the ISS protected? Over."
"Hello Sara", he spoke to me. This was my first contact with outer space, I vaguely heard the answer. "We move out of the way", and then he spoke about a thin shield around it.

Soon enough, we lost contact with the ISS, abruptly. It was over. Not all the questions had been asked. 

Sound engineer, Eric Thibodeau brightly explained "The ham radio picks up the signal, then it is fed into the board... along with the camera and speakers. We all have back up systems!" Something I didn't ...when my video recording didn't work, I didn't even have the tape recorder on. To top it off, I learned there will be no broadcast for at least a few weeks. NASA will take a while to edit it too. I would have had the only immediate footage, only I DIDN'T, but for a  brief few minutes of it.

Lesson learned. Be prepared. I also could have used another helping hand too. It is hard being crew, interviewer and a participant also.