 When I was 14, my classmates and I got to talk to Andy Thomas, an Australian-born astronaut. While he wasn't in space at the time, it was still an experience that shaped the rest of my education. Just last week, students from the United Kingdom, Russia and Italy got the chance to talk to astronauts on board the space station as part of ARRES, Amateur Radio on the International Space Station. And this is your space pod for March 2nd, 2016. ARRES aims to get kids excited about STEM, science, technology, engineering and mathematics by letting them ask questions to real astronauts in space. It also gives them hands-on experience in radio science and the program is available to any educational institution around the globe. In fact, later this month, the ARRES program will initiate their 1000th Radio Educational Contact at the International Space Station. If someone wants to be an astronaut when they grow up, what should they be doing now as a kid to prepare over? Radio contacts can either be direct, where the school or organization uses their own radio equipment, but this can be a little bit expensive and require some expertise. And the other option is to use a tele-bridge contact, where the school uses a telephone to contact a ground ARRES station, and this ground station relays that telephone conversation up to the space station. There are 12 tele-bridge stations around the world, including one in South Australia, run by Mr Tony Hutchinson. One SS, you know, one SS. This is VK5, Azulu, Alfie, India, VK5, ZAI in Kingston, South Australia. I got the chance to visit Tony's station, and upon driving up to where it looks like any other regular regional Australian household, he looks up for the huge antenna sticking out of his roof and the racks of radio equipment that are all scattered around his lounge room. These tele-bridge stations can also be used as a backup communication system for the space station. We had a small emergency on the docking of the Progress Supplier Rocket. They obviously rang up and said, can you go and stand by? That's amazing, isn't it, that NASA's own antennas failed and you were called in to rescue communications? Yes. And as a way for station crew members to contact their family while on station. In fact, when Andy Thomas was aboard the Russian space station Mir, Tony Hutchinson was able to connect Andy with his family so they could have conversations every time the Mir space station passed over Australia. So, how can your school get involved? It's as simple as deciding whether you want a direct or a tele-bridge contact, filling out an application form, waiting for a scheduled time that suits both your school, the tele-bridge contact, if you're using one, and the crew members onboard the space station. Scheduling is the biggest hurdle to obtaining a radio contact and can lead to wait times of about 12 months between filling in an application form and having your students talk to the station. Most radio contacts last from about 8 to 10 minutes and your students can ask as many questions as they can fit into that time. Now, ARIS is designed for educational institutions, but that doesn't mean that the general public can't get involved. Upcoming contact details are posted to the ARIS website and if a contact is scheduled while the International Space Station is passing over your head, you can use radio equipment to tune into the conversation by listening to the frequency 145.8 MHz. Now, you might need some specialised radio equipment to do this, so this would be the perfect time to head to your local amateur radio club and get involved. And although rare, sometimes station crew members get the chance to conduct unscheduled radio contacts with amateur radio enthusiasts all around the world. Thank you for watching and I hope you learned a little bit more about amateur radio on the space station than you knew before. And if you liked this video, feel free to share it on social media and subscribe to our YouTube channel at youtube.com slash tmro for more space pods like this one. I'd like to thank Tony Hutchinson for letting me come and see his ARIS ground station and I'd love to give a huge shout out to all the patrons of tomorrow whom without this space pod would not be possible. Thank you for all your contributions and all the help you've given us in crowdfunding this show. If you'd like to know more about crowdfunding space pods, head over to patreon.com slash space pod. Before I finish, I'd like to welcome Scott Kelly, Mikhail Konyenko and Serge Volkov back down to Earth and wish them a speedy re-adaptation to Earth's gravity. My name is Lisa Stojanowski and until next time, keep on discovering.