QUESTION:
Please give me information on how to contact the Space Shuttle.

ANSWER from Kathleen Potter on April 22, 1997:
There are at least three ways to contact the shuttle, but I'm not the right person to talk to and I'm in a training class all week so I won't have time to research it. Here's some information to help track down the right people to talk to:

1. E-mail. This is secure e-mail, and not open to a lot of people, but you may want to look into the possibility of including it as part of the shuttle on - line program, maybe have people e-mail questions like they do now, and then pick a few to send to the astronauts on orbit. I don't know who the appropriate people would be to talk to.

2. Amateur or ham radio. Every once in a while, the astronauts talk to people via ham radios. I'm not sure who coordinates these activities but it's probably someone at JSC as part of the mission planning. It's usually done as part of a payload called SAREX (Shuttle Amateur Radio Experiment) but may be done at other times also.

3. Interviews, teleconferences with astronauts. This is probably handled by PAO.

ANSWER from Steve Sides on April 21, 1997:
There are several ways to contact the crew on the shuttle. The best way is to send a question to the shuttle web page at http://shuttle.nasa.gov. There is an area for asking questions of the crew. These questions will be uplinked to the crew and unless the crew is busy they reply. The answers are on the web page for anyone to view.

If you want to talk directly to the crew and you have a HAM radio license, use a 2 meter HAM system on the following frequencies: 145.55 MHz Shuttle and MIR transmit frequencies 144.91, 144.93, 144.95 or 144.97 shuttle receive frequencies which are mission dependant. Sometimes the crew will have their radio on to talk to folks on the ground but sometimes they don't turn it on so don't disappointed if you can't hear them when they fly over.

You can find out when the shuttle will be flying over your town by accessing the shuttle web page in the SAREX area. Have fun listening for the shuttle crew!