I believe NASA does have a few UHF stations elsewhere, or at least used to. As of a 1998 document about the shuttle program [1], they listed 6 UHF air-to-ground stations, 3 of them in other countries. The U.S.-based ones were in Guam, Hawaii, and Florida; and the others were in Ascension Island (a British dependency halfway between Africa and South America), Bermuda (a British dependency off the east coast of Canada), and Dakar, Senegal.
[1] http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/technology/sts-newsref/s...
Just a clarification: Bermuda is not really close to any major coastline, and certainly not the Canadian one.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Bermuda/@31.2546129,-41.52...
Re:A Laser Message from Space
by toomuchtodo on Monday June 23, 2014 @04:26PM
(#7934403)
850 miles (closest point is in North Carolina) isn't necessarily far.
When someone says "off the coast", I would not expect 850 miles of distance. And, even more, when they say "off the east coast", I would not expect it to be almost directly south of the east coast. Those were the points I was attempting to relay.
Secondly, there many more options available than TDRSS or UHF. Amateur radio enthusiasts frequently make contact with astronauts (2 meter and 70cm bands, IIRC). While that doesn't really solve the blackout problem, I find it hard to imagine that there isn't a lower-frequency radio which could maintain voice contact with the ISS.