Saturday December 31, 2011 a radio contact is planned with students in
Historical Museum of Gdansk in Poland. Expectedly, the contact will be
established at approximately 14:04 UTC, which is 15:04 CEWT. Amateur
radio station SP2ZIE will call OR4ISS.

The Gdansk Historical Museum was founded in 1970 as the Museum of
History of the City of Gdansk. At the beginning, Museum was limited to
the sixteenth century Main Town Hall. Presently it includes several
famous monuments of the Gdansk’s architecture.

The Historical Museum of Gdansk gathered collections documenting the
city’s history since the Middle Ages to modern times. It offers visitors
exhibits of significant historical and cultural value. The Museum also
organizes exhibitions of national and foreign origin. It is responsible
for publishing exhibition catalogues, for the renovation and restoration
of various works of art, including monuments, but most importantly it
offers lessons dedicated to the rich history of the city and provides
facilities for meetings, seminars and lectures. One of its goals is
cooperation with other cultural institutions.

This year the Museum actively supports the celebration of the 400th
anniversary of the birth of one of the greatest personalities in the
history of Gdansk – the astronomer Johannes Hevelius. His passion
greatly contributed to advancements in our knowledge of stellar objects
travelling across the night sky. Therefore, the Museum organized several
exhibitions, presenting Hevelius’ achievements and research instruments.
Also presented is the modern space exploration history, related to
spaceflight and the space age in general. Furthermore, the Museum is
also involved in building a “pulsar clock” – an extremely accurate
device, used for the study of pulsars – rotating neutron stars.

Performing an ARISS contact with one of the crew members of the
International Space Station perfectly fits in the anniversary
celebrations. The event will provide a direct contact between the
citizens of Gdansk and an astronaut, who is considered by the public as
the modern equivalent of the great explorers, expanding the horizon of
our knowledge, reflecting the work of astronomer Johannes Hevelius.

The ARISS contact from the Museum will foster interest in astronautics,
astronomy and space exploration in general – especially with the young
generation. Who knows, maybe in the audience there will be a future
scientist who, in due time, will become the next Johannes Hevelius…

The Polish Press Agency (PAP) supports this event.

The conversation with NASA astronaut Daniel C. Burbank KC5ZSX will be
conducted in English. Downlink signals with the astronaut’s answers will
be audible in Europe on 145.800 MHz FM.

The event will be live broadcast in streaming video on
http://live.arisspolska.info/

The questions will be asked by students from different schools in the
Gdansk region.