Episode XXIX: Epilouge

Hello there, my dear readers. I must apologize for my nine-month absence from this place. It seems time had slipped away from me. I'm back, though, with one last entry.

February 2, 2009 is a day that no one involved with Operation: First Contact will soon forget. One this day, all of our efforts came to fruition. From a small electronics lab at Humber College, we made history.

For me, that morning started much too early. Waking up at 5:30 in the morning, I quickly showered and drove off to the school, grabbing coffee and Timbits on the way. We all met up at the school for 6:30, and made sure that all the last-minute tasks were completed. The room seemed empty at 6:30, but we knew that in a mere couple of hours it would be filled with family, friends, and the media.

As the morning went on, people started to trickle into the room. Professors, administrators, and people from the school's marketing department. Humber's security was there in full force, making sure that only our friends, family, guests, and the media were admitted into the lab.

I was super nervous about the events that were about to transpire later that day. The entire country was going to be there watching us. What if something didn't work? What if we couldn't make our contact? We'd look like fools in front of everyone.

I get nervous pretty easily. The day before our contact, I did a live interview on CBC Newsworld. In a state of near-panic, I used the phrase, "A lot of people want to know how one urinates in space." I used the word "urinate" on live TV. That was just with the CBC watching me. The day of contact, though, representatives and reporters from many different networks and news organizations were present. In short, we were graced with the presence of CBC, CTV, Global, The Canadian Press, The Toronto Star, The Toronto Sun, OMNI, CFRB, and countless other outlets. Those who could not fit in the room were asked to go downstairs into the reception area, where our contact would be played live on a big screen.


There was a really strange energy in the air that morning. Anxiety, nervousness, and excitement seemed to be the predominant themes of the day. As the countdown ticked down, Gino and Mark Rector gave the crowd little bits of information about the project.

At 12:33, we were down to the wire. We had one minute left. As we opened up the squelch on the radio, the only sound in the room was the static coming from our radio. The room was jammed packed full of people, but no one made a sound.

"T-minus six, four, three, two, one. We're live." Mark Rector said into his microphone.

Gino spoke into the radio. "NA1SS, this is VA3JUV, Humber College, checking in for scheduled contact. Do you copy?"

Nothing but static.

Five seconds later, he tried again.

"I have you a little bit weak. Can you try again?" was the response from Dr. Sandra Magnus. We did it! We made contact! At that moment, it was like the weight of the world was lifted right off our shoulders. We did it!

Continuing on, we started asking our questions. If you're interested, here's an mp3 file of our contact. It's one thing to read the questions and answers, but it's a whole other thing to listen to the contact.

Click here to play the contact.

We'd like to congratulate our contest winners, Mike Bodnar, Bruce Pena, Sheree Pickering, Sanjeev Singh for their awesome questions.

After the contact was done, we all filed downstairs into the reception hall, where we spent the better part of an hour answering questions for all the different news outlets. There was food and coffee, but I don't think any of us had the chance to enjoy it. As soon as one interview was done, we were whisked off to the next.

The next day, Gino and Mark made an appearance on CTV's Canada AM. I got to be on the The Daily Planet, and Paul and I had the honour of speaking to Sandie Rinaldo.

In the days following the contact, we took some time to ourselves to relax. Then one morning, we got a surprise call from Roberta Bondar, the first Canadian woman in space. She invited us to a lecture she was giving at the University of Toronto. It was a pleasure and an honour to meet her.

Not long after that, we got a chance to meet Liberal leader, Michael Ignatieff. Soon after that, we took a bus full of telecommunications students to Ottawa, where we met Marc Garneau, Canada's first astronaut.

Things have been fairly quiet since then, but as I write this, we're all getting ready to make the trip back to Ottawa, where we will be attending an awards gala hosted by Canada's Telecommunications Hall of Fame.

The Hall does a lot of good for Canada, and for the telecom industry in General. As I've said before, please visit their website. Look around their virtual hall of fame. You'd be surprised what you'll find in there!

Well, my friends, this is it. I want to sincerely thank every single one of you who has supported our project in any way. I can not adequately express my gratitude to you.

Who knows where things will go from here? The one thing that we've taken away from this is that you never know what the future holds. We started out as students who knew nothing about anything, and in a few short years, we contact space. None of us could have predicted that.

As Roberta Bondar said to me, "Reach for the stars. I'll see you there."

Episode XXIII: Canada's Telecommunications Hall of Fame Honours Humber College Students and Professor for Space Communications Project

The countdown to contact is at four days now, and I promise each and every one of you that we're going to be super-busy from now until then. With time quickly running out, there's a whole bunch of things going on not just for our immediate group, but for a number of other people.

For instance, the marketing department here at Humber College has started inviting the media to our contact. Humber's chief of security is busy making arrangements to handle the crowds. The engineer from Radio Humber and I are going to be meeting up a little later to discuss the logistics of broadcasting the contact live on our own radio station.
Our group, on the other hand, is testing, tweaking, re-testing, re-tweaking, and repeating as necessary. We've got a super-busy weekend ahead of us, clearing out the lab where we'll be actually making our contact from. After all, we'd like to fit as many people in there as possible.

I got an interesting email from Gino this morning. In it, a link to a press release from Canada's Telecommunications Hall of Fame. In short:

OTTAWA, ONTARIO--(Marketwire - Jan. 28, 2009) - Canada's Telecommunications Hall of Fame announced today that it will pay tribute to Humber College students Paul Je, Patrick Neelin, Gino Cunti, and Kevin Luong and their professor, Mark Rector for their innovative NASA-approved satellite radiocommunication system to make voice radio contact with astronauts aboard the International Space Station. The Hall of Fame honours will take place at the 2009 Telecom Laureate Awards at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, October 29, 2009.

If you'll allow me to do so, I'd like to talk a little about the hall of fame.

I can't speak on the behalf of my teammates, but I think that having an organization dedicated to honouring Canadian achievements is an amazing idea. I've had many conversations with first- and second-semester students here at Humber, and one of the things that I stress is that the telecommunications industry is one of the most important industries in the world. In Canada alone, there are 15.6 million cellular phone subscribers. In 2005, roughly ten percent of Canada's non-cellular telephones were VOIP-based. It's predicted that by 2010, that figure will increase to ninety-five percent. The telecom industry is growing more rapidly than any industry in the world. 

Another example of how important the industry is: When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans back in 2005, one of the first things the military did was try to establish a communications link so that they could co-ordinate their efforts. In addition to that, amateur radio operators in the area played a critical role in getting information back and forth to the affected areas where the communications infrastructure was destroyed.

Canada's role in as a pioneer in the telecommunications industry, I feel, is often over-shadowed or taken for granted. Without the efforts of people like Guglielmo Marconi and Reginald Fessenden, the industry would be drastically different. If you do a little bit of research, you'll find a whole list of Canadian telecommunications advances. And yet, so many of these great feats are taken for granted.

That's why I believe that Canada's Telecommunications Hall of Fame is so important. There are a lot of of brilliant Canadians who have helped to shape the industry. They have, quite literally, changed the world forever. You hear about sports players being inducted into their various halls of fame, but let me tell you this: the people that Canada's Telecommunications Hall of Fame pays tribute to are heroes, and they deserve to be treated as such.

The hall of fame, I feel, celebrates Canada's achievements, and promotes the idea that not all of our heroes are from the past. We could talk at length about people like Marconi and Fessenden, but who knows that the future holds? The Hall promotes that idea, and inspires students to work to their full potential. It honours the professors that teach students. All in all, Canada's Telecommunications Hall of Fame is doing a whole lot of good. Not just for Canada, but for people all around the world. I am honoured to be recognized by such an influential organization.

Episode XXII: Date confirmed!

Holy crap, our contact is coming up quick! We got official notification on Friday that our contact is going to take place on February 2, 2009 at 12:29 pm (Eastern Standard Time).

With only one week left, we have a lot of testing and re-testing to do. We know that everything is going to work, but it's just a matter of confirming that everything is going to perform the way it's supposed to.

There's a buzz circulating around the school. An excitement in the air, even. This is it. This is what we've been working so hard for. It's right there in our grasp! If you think Gino and Paul look happy in this photo, you haven't seen anything yet.

Episode XXI: Almost Game Time

I think that one of my biggest regrets about this project is the fact that I haven't been keeping up this blog as often as I had hoped to. It's almost game day, and we have accomplished a whole lot so far. Looking back at this blog, though, I realize that it's hard to really get an accurate picture of each little thing we've been through. I feel I must apologize for this.

You can sleep easy, though, knowing that while this blog hasn't been updated all that much, we've still been extremely busy. The good folks on the ISS have been playing around with their radio setup, and that's caused us a few little problems in our testing. We've managed to work around it, though, and get all our testing done. An example of our final push: the last couple of nights, we've haven't left school until 10 or 11 o'clock at night.

I suppose at this point, it goes beyond testing. We're not just testing; we're rehearsing. We're all going to have a role to play, and we're going to make sure that come contact day, everything goes smoothly.

As I'm sure you've noticed, we're holding a contest here. In a nutshell, we want you to suggest some questions! Given the chance, what would you ask the brave men and women on the space station? On our home page, we've got a link at the top of the page. Click on that link, and fill out our easy form. Almost instantly, we'll get an email with your question. We're going to choose a few winners to come to our contact live and ask the questions themselves. Pretty darn exciting, eh?

In any event, expect to hear a lot more from us in the coming weeks. Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to be making some history!

In the meantime, though, enjoy these pictures taken by Debby Walker from Humber, Etc. Thanks Debby!

 Kevin, Gino, and I working hard on our HCB Tracker.

Paul getting ready to work hard.

I'm not sure what we're panicking over, but I'm sure it's nothing!

Episode XX: Contact Coming Soon!

Hello there, my dear readers. The holidays are in full swing, and there's no shortage of snow on the ground. It's truly a magical time.

My friends, I have a pretty big announcement for you. I just got the news, myself, and I can't wait to share it.

Over the last year and a half, we have dedicated a good portion of our lives to Operation: First Contact. Reading back in this blog can give you an idea of the amount of work we've put into this project. It hasn't always been an easy road that we've travelled, but it sure was rewarding.

All our hard work... everything we've worked so hard for... it's all about to pay off.

I just got the email confirming that we have a window for our contact! Clear your calendars, because sometime between February 2 and February 9 we are going to make history!

As a group, we're going to take a little time to collect ourselves over the holidays. When we get back, though, we are going to push harder than we ever have in preparation for the big day.

As you know, on the day of contact we will be asking questions to the astronauts on the International Space Station. We figured that it would be selfish of us to ask all the questions without involving the school. I'm sure that there's a lot of you out there who would love the chance to ask your own questions. This January, we are going to be hosting a contest. In a nutshell, students from Humber College will be able to submit questions to us. Whoever has the best question will be able to ask the questions themselves when we make contact. Imagine being able to say you talked to someone in space!

Check back here in the new year, and we'll have everything ready to go! In the meantime, I hope that everyone has an amazing holiday season, and a most awesome new year!