Suitsat, Making use of old spacesuits Options

[ljk4-1]

Listen to the radio from an ISS spacesuit

If you were asked what station is currently orbiting 400 km above the Earth at
28 000 km/h you may be tempted to answer the International Space Station (ISS).
This is of course correct but if you were to look with a good telescope behind
the ISS (or tune in with the appropriate equipment) you may soon pick up a
second station: a radio station.

More at:

http://www.esa.int/esaHS/SEMDMPNZCIE_iss_0.html

[hal_9000]

SuitSat release (NASA TV).

http://rapidshare.de/files/12500869/suitsatrelease.ogg.html

[ljk4-1]

Space Weather News for Friday, Feb. 3rd

http://spaceweather.com

SUITSAT: There's a new satellite orbiting Earth, and it's a weird one. On
Friday, Feb. 3rd, at 6:02 pm EST, astronauts threw an old Russian spacesuit
overboard from the International Space Station. The disembodied suit, nicknamed
SuitSat, is now circling Earth and transmitting a radio message which you can
hear using a police scanner or ham radio tuned to 145.990 MHz (FM).

Please visit http://spaceweather.com for more information about SuitSat and how to tune into it.


To fully understand the Suitsat-1 downlinks, some background information is in order.

One of the reasons our Russian colleagues were interested in developing SuitSat was as an on-orbit commemoration of the 175th anniversary of the Bauman Moscow State Technical University. This university is where many of the engineers in the Russian Space Agency graduated. As a result, the Russian-generated messages include congratulatory comments to the Bauman Moscow State Technical University.

In addition to the messages from Russia, there are voice messages from students in Japan, Europe (Spanish and German), Canada (French) and the USA (English). The USA message is from a student enrolled in the Eastern Middle School, Silver Spring, Maryland. Eastern Middle School is a NASA Explorer School. In addition, the Suitsat-1 ID was voiced by a Korean-born young lady enrolled in Paint Branch High School, Burtonsville, Maryland, USA. As you can see, Suitsat-1 truly has an international flavor!

http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/articles/Ba...itsat/index.php


Student drawings aboard SuitSat:

http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/articles/Ba...ges/Figure7.jpg

[MahFL]

Unfortunately Suitsat seems to be SuitSilent..................

[RNeuhaus]

As I have not read well about the SuitSat news, then when I saw the TV NASA about the SuitSat and I got fearfull since this SuitSpace was drifting away from the ISS. Now I know it. What funny it is!

Rodolfo

[hal_9000]

As I have not read well about the SuitSat news, then when I saw the TV NASA about the SuitSat and I got fearfull since this SuitSpace was drifting away from the ISS. Now I know it. What funny it is! 

Rodolfo

Oh.. Frank Poole?? We found him!

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

Christ, the Russians couldn't even make THIS spacecraft work properly.

[abalone]

Christ, the Russians couldn't even make THIS spacecraft work properly.

Easy to have a laugh at their expense but its my recollection that the Russians appear to have the only working space-craft at the moment. I dont recall the last Cosmonauts the met with a fatal accident, remind me!

[ljk4-1]

But after only two orbits, or about three hours, SuitSat went silent.

“Apparently, the batteries on the spacesuit have either frozen or died,” NASA commentator Rob Navias said. “SuitSat is no longer being heard by ham radio operators around the world.”

SuitSat will eventually burn up in Earth's atmosphere in a few weeks' time, NASA officials said.

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/060204_exp12_eva2.html

[Canopus]

Faint signals received by folks in Japan before it went silent.

A pity the duration time was so short.

[BPCooper]

It didn't go silent, apparently. It was probably just rotating and broadcasting away from Earth earlier this morning. But observations all day from around the world have proven it is working:

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/station/exp1...204suitsat.html

[djellison]

Christ, the Russians couldn't even make THIS spacecraft work properly.

Evidently they COULD

[nprev]

SuitSat might have been mooning the Earth (ta-da, da!) as payback for its sentence to death by reentry...but it seems to have gotten over its temper tantrum somewhat!

[ljk4-1]

"SuitSat-1" Designated as AO-54; Signal Reported Weaker

http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2006/02/06/103/?nc=1

NEWINGTON, CT, Feb 6, 2006--Based on recent reports, the already-puny 145.99 MHz
signal from "SuitSat-1" may be getting even weaker. The unusual Amateur Radio
transmit-only satellite, which consists of a discarded Russian Orlan spacesuit
equipped with ham radio gear, was released February 3 by International Space
Station (ISS) Expedition 12 Flight Engineer Valery Tokarev as he and Expedition
12 Commander Bill McArthur, KC5ACR, began a six-hour spacewalk. The crew stuffed
some of its laundry into the spacesuit to help it to keep its form as it orbits
Earth. Over the weekend, AMSAT-NA officially designated SuitSat-1 as AMSAT OSCAR
54 (AO-54). Tony Hutchison, VK5ZAI, in Australia, reported that on its second
pass over his location February 6, SuitSat's signal was down.

"It appeared that signals had deteriorated since yesterday on both passes," said
Hutchison, who's the Australia coordinator for the Amateur Radio on the
International Space Station (ARISS) program, SuitSat's sponsor. "It may be the
angle that SuitSat was when it passed, but on yesterday's passes it was possible
to detect it rolling," Hutchison continued. "I did detect voice this last pass,
but it was well down in the noise, and I didn't hear any SSTV this last pass."

Bob King, VE6BLD, in Alberta, who's managed to copy SuitSat fairly well on
several passes, also noted that the signal's strength had declined from what it
was during the previous two passes he'd heard. Located in DO32, King says he's
using an FT-847 transceiver with the preamplifier on and a 22-element crossed
Yagi with right and left circular polarization providing 19 dB of gain. A preamp
at the antenna feeds into half-inch hardline to the shack. "The bird was almost
overhead, so the signals were about S6 when clear," he reported over the
weekend. "I also received the SSTV signal with some noise."

SuitSat-1 identifies by voice, "This is SuitSat-1, Amateur Radio station RS0RS,"
which was recorded in several languages. The telemetry is digital voice. There's
also a CW ID that reportedly says "Spacesuit-1" instead of "SuitSat-1."
SuitSat-1 also is transmitting a single slow-scan TV image.

SuitSat-1's very weak VHF signal notwithstanding, reports have come from
stations and listening posts literally around the globe. ARISS International
Secretary Rosalie White, K1STO, reports the ARISS Team was continuing to receive
files containing some SSTV audio as well as snippets of voice and CW. "You can
hear deep fades in the signal as the suit spins--something we learned from this
experiment," she said. "The team is coming up with ideas including things that
students can do with all the data we collect from recordings, such as looking at
spin rate and transmission fading." White notes that the SuitSat Web site has
logged some 5 million hits since the beginning of February, and media interest
in the project remains high.

A.J. Farmer, AJ3U, in Maryland, has invited the Amateur Radio and monitoring
communities to post audio clips to his Web site. Farmer reported earlier today
that SuitSat's orbit was some two miles below and one minute ahead of the ISS's.
He points out that several reports indicate that NA1SS aboard the ISS is
re-transmitting SuitSat-1's 2-meter signal on 70 cm by using the ARISS Phase 2
transceiver as a crossband repeater. The crossband repeater downlink frequency
is nominally 437.800 MHz, but Doppler effect can be substantial on UHF.

"This is great news since the SuitSat transmitter output is very low," Farmer
said of the crossband arrangement. He advised tuning about 10 kHz higher at the
start of the pass, moving down to 437.800 when SuitSat-1 is overhead and to
437.790 by the end of the pass. He provided Keplerian elements for use in
satellite tracking software:

1 28933U 05035C 06035.17648092 .00150877 00000-0 98827-3 0 18

2 28933 51.6460 151.5234 0008831 241.8711 118.1817 15.74747302 34

During a series of VHF contacts from NA1SS following the spacewalk, Expedition
12 Commander McArthur expressed surprise that was unable to hear SuitSat-1 from
the ISS shortly after coming inside from the spacewalk. He initially believed
the unique satellite was dead. "We should have been pretty close but didn't hear
anything," he told one station. Scott Avery, WA6LIE, provided downlink audio of
the QSOs.

Some early speculation about SuitSat-1's difficulty has centered on whether
SuitSat-1's batteries might somehow have been adversely affected by the
temperature extremes of space. Telemetry copied by VE6BLD indicated a voltage of
7.0 V, while the nominal battery voltage is 28 V, but it's not known if the
telemetry was accurate.

"It's the same battery we use in our spacesuits," McArthur told another station
in a post-spacewalk QSO, "and so I would think they would handle the
temperature, but it's hard to say." McArthur noted that the batteries on an
Orlan spacesuit are in an external compartment that's already exposed to the
harsh space environment.

McArthur remained upbeat about a future SuitSat mission. "Where there's a will
there's a way," he philosophized. "We've got more suits that need to be
jettisoned." He said the SuitSat-1 project "was pretty well set up and wasn't
that difficult for us to execute."

ARISS Ham Radio Project Engineer Kenneth Ransom, N5VHO, told ARRL today that he
had not seen the low voltage report. "But since the initial reports from Japan
were weak signals, then the issue is likely to have been present from the
start," he said, adding that premature media reports of SuitSat-1's demise were
based on a lack of reports for several orbits. "Little did we know that the
output was so diminished," he said. "It is now apparent that everything is
functioning but that the output level is extremely low." He expressed hopes that
additional telemetry would "help support or dismiss the current list of
potential causes for the low output" and help ARISS to pin down the problem's
cause.

ARISS International Chairman Frank Bauer, KA3HDO, said over the weekend that
evidence to that point in the mission suggested a problem with the antenna, the
feed line, the transmitter output power "and/or any of the connections in
between." Bauer called on stations around the world to help narrow down what's
causing the weak signal by making an extra effort to listen for SuitSat-1 on
145.99 MHz and especially to copy the voice telemetry.

Early on February 4, Bauer was able to hear one overhead pass that included at
least part of the English-language ID, recorded by his daughter, Michelle. "Keep
your spirits up, and let's continue to be optimistic," he urged later in an
official SuitSat-1 status report. "And please keep monitoring!"

[Rakhir]

NASA Image of SuitSat in Space

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=19587