Four students at the Humber Institute of Technology just completed their term project: to build a radio from scratch and call the International Space Station. You know, in space.
After one hopeful transmission, the team only heard static. A second attempt was met with a response from space lady Sandra Magnus, who, sitting 220 miles from the surface of the earth, granted the students a short interview. Spoiler alert: they talked about space, and how awesome it is (“very very” as it turns out).
The conversation with the ISS was the culmination of a radio communications course, and constitutes “a first” for students, according to their teachers. Unlike the legions of dedicated ham radio operators that hurl their call signs at the ISS on a regular basis, the Humber team designed and built the radios themselves. They haven’t prank called space yet, so I’m declaring the project a complete failure. Check out a video of the transmission here. [Globe and Mail via Reddit]
