The images of the SSTV series 28 refer to two important events.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Soyuz-Apollo space mission, also known as the ASTP (Apollo-Soyuz Test Project), which was a joint space project of the USSR (Russia) and the United States. Its purpose was to dock the Soyuz and Apollo spacecraft in orbit. This mission, carried out in July 1975, was the beginning of cooperation between the two countries in space exploration.
On July 15, 1975, the Saturn IB rocket with the Apollo command module and docking module launched from Cape Canaveral. On the same day, a Soyuz rocket took off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, carrying the Soyuz 19 spacecraft. The docking of the Apollo and Soyuz spacecraft took place on July 17, 1975. The crews spent several days in orbit together.
40 years ago, Tony England W0ORE during the Challenger shuttle mission STS 51-F in 1985, he achieved the first ever two-way Slow Scan TV (SSTV) space contact.
Tony was running a Motorola model MX-340 handheld 2-meter transceiver and a Robot Research model 1200C slow-scan television scan converter with an antenna fitted on the inside of one of Challengers windows.
STS-51-F (also known as Spacelab 2) was the nineteenth flight of NASA’s Space Shuttle program, and the eighth flight of Space Shuttle Challenger. It launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on 29 July 1985, and landed at Edwards Air Force Base, California, just under eight days later on 6 August 1985, at 12:45:26 pm PDT.
The diploma shows the Apollo and Soyuz spacecraft approaching each other in orbit, as well as a photograph of Tony England.
Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) is a cooperative venture of international amateur radio societies and the space agencies that support the International Space Station (ISS). The primary goal of ARISS is to promote exploration of science, technology, engineering, the arts, and mathematics topics. ARISS does this by organizing scheduled contacts via amateur radio between crew members aboard the ISS and students. Before and during these radio contacts, students, educators, parents, and communities take part in hands-on learning activities tied to space, space technologies, and amateur radio.
