International Space Station Astronauts Receive Father’s Day Gifts – RadioShack Provides Talking Picture Frames With Photos, Messages From Astronauts’
The Russian cosmonauts are
delivering surprise Father’s Day gifts for American astronaut James Voss and
Russian cosmonaut Yuri Usachev.
RadioShack is sending them
talking picture frames with photos and 10-second voice messages from their
daughters.
Today’s Soyuz docking is the last opportunity to have a crew deliver
Father’s Day gifts before Sunday, June 17.
The visiting Soyuz cosmonaut crew
of Talgat Musabayev and Yuri Baturin, who blasted off from Baikonur,
Kazakhstan, on April 28, carried both frames up to the International Space
Station.
Each talking picture frame is a pocket-sized black square that opens like
a book to reveal a photograph on one side and a microphone and speaker on the
other.
The frame records a message up to 10 seconds in length with the simple
press of a button.
Kristie Voss, a 21-year-old student at the University of Texas at Austin,
sent her dad, James Voss, a recent photo with voice greetings from her and her
dog: “Hey dad, I hope you have a great Father’s Day aboard the Station.
I
wish Cody and I could be with you.
I love you, Kris.”
The other gift was personalized by 12-year-old Evgenia Usachev for her
father, Yuri Usachev.
She recorded her greeting at her parents’ apartment in
Korolev, Russia:
“Hey dad, we are wishing you good fortune and success in
your job, and good relationships with the crew.”
The frames underwent extensive safety analyses and vacuum chamber tests
before being certified for flight last week.
The tests confirmed the picture
frames weren’t an electrical hazard and would not give off any dangerous fumes
in the recycled atmosphere of the space station.
Photos of the two daughters and recordings of their greetings are
available at www.lunacorp.com.
LunaCorp of Fairfax, VA, set up the picture frame project for RadioShack
by collaborating with MirCorp of the Netherlands and NASA’s multimedia
partner, Dreamtime.
The companies jointly earned the approvals required from
Rosviakosmos (the Russian space agency), NASA, and RSC Energia, which is the
Russian company that builds the Soyuz vehicles.
RadioShack also is working on a way to honor Susan Helms, the third member
of the Expedition Two crew who is now on the station.
Helms plays keyboard in
the astronaut band “Max Q” when she’s on Earth, and RadioShack would like to
send Max Q music to the space station via the MP3 players the retailer sells.
“Our MP3 players are the next perfect gift for the space station,” said
Jim McDonald, senior vice president of marketing and advertising for
RadioShack.
“MP3 players take up virtually no room since they’re smaller than
a deck of cards, and you can always get new music delivered instantly by
computer link even when you are very, very far away from home.
Plus, no
matter what acrobatics the astronauts do in zero gravity, the MP3 players will
not skip.”
LunaCorp and RadioShack will work with NASA and Rosviakosmos over the next
few months to ensure that the MP3 players are “space qualified” — able to fly
to the International Space Station without posing any danger to the crew or
environment.
About RadioShack
RadioShack Corporation is the nation’s largest and most trusted consumer
electronics retailer and offers both on- and off-line shopping convenience.
With more than 7,200 stores and dealers, RadioShack sells more wireless
telephones, telecommunications products and electronics parts and accessories
than any other retailer.
Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin is RadioShack’s
space ambassador.
For more information, visit the RadioShack corporate Web
site at www.radioshackcorporation.com.
About LunaCorp
LunaCorp is developing a series of space initiatives including landing a
remotely controlled high-bandwidth robot on the Moon in late 2003.
RadioShack
became the Moon robot’s first corporate sponsor last year.
A prototype lunar
robot, built by LunaCorp’s technical partners at the Robotics Institute of
Carnegie Mellon University, will carry out field trials this July in the
Canadian Arctic at Houghton Crater.
For more information, contact LunaCorp
President David Gump at 1-703-207-4500 or visit the Web site:
www.lunacorp.com.
About MirCorp
MirCorp is the leading manned commercial space exploration company,
working with customers in the media and in private tourism.
It is developing
a man-tended module capable of being docked to the International Space
Station.
Corporate headquarters are in Amsterdam, Netherlands (telephone:
+31 20 520 68 40); the media contact is Jeffrey Lenorovitz of the InfoWEST
Group (U.S. telephone: +1-703-448-5669, European cellular: +33 6 80 85 86 25).
About Dreamtime
DREAMTiME, a privately held Silicon Valley-based new media company, is
focused on increasing awareness of space through education and multimedia
technology.
Under the terms of a multi-year agreement with the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), DREAMTiME is digitizing existing
NASA archives and providing new content for a variety of outlets including
broadcast, film and the Web.
This collaboration was made possible by The
Commercial Space Act of 1998.
