SuitSat to be launched Friday
February 3
A Extra-Vehicular
Activity (EVA)—or Spacewalk will be conducted on the International Space
Station (ISS) Friday 3 February 2006. During this spacewalk, the ISS crew will
push a discarded Russian spacesuit overboard - with no humans in it, of course!
The “Orlan” spacesuit
has been modified to carry an amateur radio station and has been dubbed
Suitsat-1 (also called Radioskaf or Radio Sputnik in Russian).
The image above shows
SuitSat in it's flight configuration. You can see the electronics control panel
on the top of the helmet along with the SuitSat antenna. A new handle has been
added around the midsection of the suit (black stripes). The handle is an
important addition that will allow the astro/cosmonaut launching the suit to
move it safely.
SuitSat-1 carries an
amateur radio transmitter but no receiver. It will broadcast a 1 watt signal on
145.990 MHz FM.
One of the reasons the
Russian ARISS branch, conducted by Sergei Samburov RV3DR, were interested in developping SuitSat
was an on-orbit commemoration of the 175st 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
In addition to the
messages from
to copy all the special
words (in different languages) and submit them to the ARISS team for special
educational award recognition.
Moreover, telemetry
data will also be included in the transmit cycle.
The total transmit
cycle is about 8 minutes. Messages are separated by no-transmit periodes to
aleviate the duty cycle. The batteries will probably be empty after only a few
days. SuitSat-1 will deorbit in several weeks, but will become silent within a
week or so.
Launch is expected to
occur Tuesday 3 February at about
SuitSat-1 will slowly
depart from the ISS orbit. Its is hoped that special SuitSat Kepler data will
become available soon.
The signals can be
picked up with VHF radio receivers tuned to 145.990 MHz. Moreover, the ISS
onboard station NA1SS will relay SuitSat-1 signals on 437.800 MHz FM.
Those who hear SuitSat
transmissions are asked to enter their data on the SuitSat website, http://www.suitsat.org so that participants
around the world can track the satellite.
Educational Outreach
reports (at schools or informal education sites) as well as Slow Scan TV images
can be sent to mailto:suitsat@comcast.net
. This information will be compiled by the ARISS team.
Success!
Gaston Bertels, ON4WF
ARISS-Europe Chairman