Shuttle Crew Tunes In as Hams Make History

A group of ham radio operators in Long Beach made history Sunday when they successfully transmitted a television picture to the space shuttle Atlantis orbiting high above the planet.

The five-minute transmission, some of it in color, included a relatively clear picture of ham radio operator Jim Steffen, 44, sitting on his living room couch in Long Beach with other ham operators as he talked to shuttle pilot Kenneth D. Cameron.

“That was great,” Cameron, himself an amateur radio buff, said. “Very good quality picture of you and all your compatriots.”

Brian Welch, a spokesman for the Johnson Space Center in Houston, called the successful transmission of a TV picture into space “innovative. And we applaud it.”

The event, he said, was not “epochal” in terms of the U.S. space program, but he underscored that it would have important applications for future space travel.

Ultimately, Welch said, the space program envisions “having two-way TV communication between people on the ground and a future space station, or between Earth and a lunar base, or between Earth and people traveling in space.”

Indeed, he said, “space is a very harsh environment and miscommunication can be dangerous.” Successful TV communication with space travelers, he said, “can save lives and make sure that the job gets done right.”

Space communications technology had already reached a point where signals could be sent to shuttles, in turn activating pictures on teleprinter-type equipment, Welch said. Black and white still photos also can be transmitted.

Government scientists have been working on TV communications technology, too, he said. But so far, National Aeronautics and Space Administration officials were satisfied with current methods of communication and had not made transmission of TV pictures into space a top priority, he said.

Ham radio operators, many of whom worked with NASA on the experiment, were ecstatic over Sunday’s development.

“This is the first time anybody has sent live video of the kind you and I see in our homes to a space shuttle,” said Roy Neal, chairman of the shuttle amateur radio experiment.

“It’s a noble experiment,” the retired NBC-TV reporter, who covered the early manned space flights, said in a telephone interview from Houston. “We hope that ham radio will be the personal link for people aboard space stations and their families here on Earth.”

Steffen, an electronics engineer, found himself suddenly thrust into an unfamiliar public spotlight as reporters and TV cameras converged on his home Sunday.

“I didn’t bargain for this,” the 30-year-veteran ham operator said. “I’m not a person who normally would seek fame. I would generally hide from it.”

Steffen said NASA and ham operators had been planning the experiment for months. He said NASA officials notified him to get ready about three weeks ago.

The privately funded Amateur Satellite Corp., a subsidiary of a national group of ham operators, helped Steffen set up the proper frequencies, gave him directions for pointing his antennae and sent him precise times and coordinates of the shuttle orbit, Neal said.

Four other ham radio facilities--at the Space Center in Houston; in Huntsville, Ala.; at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and in Schaumburg, Ill.--also were selected for the experiment. But because of the direction of the shuttle’s orbit, Steffen was the first.