Smiles via Satellite

We spend a lot of time here on Really Rocket Science looking at new technology, telling jokes, and covering rocket launches. The human interest stories are rare – but incredibly important:

U.S. soldier Joseph Chavez couldn’t wipe the smile from his face at seeing his daughter Lilliana for the very first time on a video call via satellite uplink from Iraq.

“Oh wow, she’s so pretty,” a beaming Chavez said over and over from Baghdad as his wife Naomi held his sleeping one-day-old daughter up to the camera for him to see.

The video conference, organized by the American non-profit foundation Freedom Calls, was held in the basement of Vancouver’s St. Paul’s Hospital and attended by throngs of media, at least for the first few minutes. Chavez was projected on a large screen, fuzzy but clearly elated.

“Look at her, she’s beautiful,” he said. “She looks happy to be alive right now.”

Naomi, who lives in Vancouver, had talked to her husband after Lilliana’s birth and sent pictures from her computer, but he was still beside himself to see his new wife and even newer daughter live onscreen.

“I saw all the pictures of everyone else getting to hold her,” said Chavez. “I’m very jealous.”

Freedom Calls is the charity behind the very slick effort:

Freedom Calls Foundation uses high technology to keep U.S. soldiers abroad connected with their families.

The signal from Iraq is bounced off a satellite and picked up in Germany, where it is sent by fibre-optic cable to Atlanta, Ga., and then by high-speed Internet to families in the United States — and this time to Canada. The service is slick, with only a 600-millisecond lag, which is noticeable but not enough to scramble conversation.

“We can connect anywhere in the world via satellite, but this is our first-ever call to Canada,” said Freedom Calls spokeswoman Kathryn Hudacek.

“When soldiers go to Iraq they have a habit of leaving a lot of pregnant wives behind,” said Hudacek. “It’s a real deployment phenomenon.”

Freedom Calls organizes 2,000 video conferences a month and at least 200 are dads meeting new babies, she said.

One of these video conferences not only allowed a soldier to see his newborn, but to watch the actual birth. And this isn’t Freedom Call’s only schtick:

Satellite junkies with a conscience and some disposable income may have just found their perfect charity. You can donate here.