Sarasota Military Academy had a date with the International Space Station on Thursday, October 22, 2026, scheduling an amateur-radio contact timed for 12:23 p.m. Eastern as the orbiting outpost passed overhead. The plan was for cadets using the school's W4SMA call sign to speak directly with NASA astronaut Luke Delaney, whose own ham radio call sign is KJ5PPF, as the station streaked across the sky at roughly 17,000 miles per hour.
A Years-Long Push to Reach Orbit
The scheduled link-up was arranged through ARISS, the organization that coordinates educational radio contacts between students and the ISS crew, which notes it conducts between 60 and 100 of these exchanges every year. For Sarasota Military Academy, a tuition-free, nonprofit military public charter school founded in 2002, the moment capped a long and occasionally interrupted effort to build a working radio program on campus. ARISS listed the station's call sign as NA1SS for the contact, according to the ISS Fan Club.
The academy's radio club traces back to 2009, when George Becht started W4SMA at the request of founding headmaster Dan Kennedy, per ARISS. The club went quiet for years afterward. Accounts of its revival differ slightly: ARISS states the program was rebooted by Becht and John Geimer in spring 2024, while the Sarasota Military Academy itself says the spark reignited in December 2023, when Geimer reached out to Becht about restarting the club.
Cadets Prepped Questions About Life in Orbit
Before Thursday's scheduled pass, students drew up questions touching on what Earth looks like from orbit, commercial space travel, civilian astronauts and ongoing experiments aboard the station, according to the ISS Fan Club's rundown of the contact. More than 30 Sarasota Military Academy cadets have earned their amateur-radio licenses since the club's founding, the same ARISS listing notes, and the school has previously said its radio operators have exchanged contacts with hams in other countries, including Italy.
The academy was also awarded a grant from Amateur Radio Digital Communications to build a station fully owned by the school, complete with an HF beam antenna and an automatic satellite-tracking system, according to the school's own account. Three for-credit science electives centered on amateur-radio operations and licensing are planned as part of that buildout, per the grant application reviewed by Amateur Radio Digital Communications.
Not the Only School Reaching the ISS This Month
Sarasota wasn't the only community chasing a conversation with Delaney this fall. On October 15, eleven students in Worcester, Massachusetts, spoke live with the astronaut aboard the ISS through a separate ARISS contact, asking him about daily life on the station and what it takes to become an astronaut, according to the Western Massachusetts ARRL. That pass lasted about 10 minutes. The Worcester effort had its own bumpy path, with a planned contact in March 2026 postponed after an unplanned early crew return from the station, the same report noted.
ARISS-US opens two proposal windows each year, in spring and fall, for schools hoping to host a contact, according to the ARRL. ARISS announced in July that 13 proposals from that window had advanced, and followed in September with word that three more U.S. schools had been selected for contacts stretching into 2026 and 2027.
For Sarasota Military Academy, the broader goal extends beyond a single radio pass. The school has said cadets are preparing for future ISS contact attempts and for expanding the W4SMA program down to SMA Prep Middle School, building on the rooftop tracking skills and licensing work already underway on campus.
