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| Pedro Duque, KC5RGG/ED4ISS, Spain's new Science Minister (European Space Agency photo) |
Radio amateur and former astronaut Pedro Duque,
KC5RGG/ED4ISS, has been named as Spain's new Minister of Science.
According to Newsline, he is an
aeronautical engineer who has made two trips to space, the first in 1998 aboard
the shuttle Discovery, and the second in 2003 on the International Space
Station. During that trip, Duque made two ham radio contacts with schools in
his home country.
National Hurricane Center Director Ken Graham, WX4KEG,
was among the operators conducting the annual on-air test of the center's
amateur radio station, WX4NHC. The station's assistant coordinator, Julio
Ripoll, WD4R, told the ARRL Letter that
the test was very successful, with all radios and antennas working well.
Princess Elettra Marconi was a
guest operator on May 31 at the Wellfleet Marconi Station on the Cape Cod
National Seashore for a commemorative exchange of messages with the historic
Signal Hill station in Newfoundland.
According to Newsline, Ms. Marconi's
father, radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi, sent the first two-way wireless
message from the U.S. to Europe from the Wellfleet station in 1903, and it was
at the Newfoundland station in 1901 that he received the first transatlantic
radio signal, the letter "S," transmitted from England. (See our interview with Princess Marconi in
the March 2018 issue of CQ. – ed..)