The Shuttle Amateur Radio EXperiment or SAREX is a project devoted to providing
amateur radio communications for licensed
astronauts on board the
Space Shuttle with other
amateur operators around the world as they fly overhead.
Amateur Radio on the International Space Station is the equivalent project on the
International Space Station. SAREX is funded entirely by the amateur radio community and receives no government funds. It has been given the status of an experiment by
NASA to facilitate its operation aboard the Space Shuttle and provide a point of contact with NASA. One of the more popular aspects of SAREX has been to involve amateur radio operators with local schools as a means to allow school children to talk directly to the astronauts and ask them questions about space and science in an effort to create greater interest in our schools about science in general.
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