Goodbye Mr Smith - SuitSat is Go!
With the final words - "Goodbye Mr Smith" - SuitSat was succesfully launched from the ISS during a routine maintenance EVA at approx 5:02 CET today.
This novel project has recycled an old Russian "Orlan" spacesuit by retro-fitting it with three batteries, a radio transmitter, and internal sensors to measure temperature and battery power - and then setting it adrit into space
It willl provide a cheap satellite for Radio Hams to tune into and find during it's short lifetime - it's batteries are expected to last a few days and it will burn up in the Earth's atmosphere within 6 weeks or so.
In that time it will relay a message in five langauges, as well as telemetry temperature, battery power and mission elapsed time.
SuitSat can be heard by anyone on the ground. All you need is an antenna (the bigger the better) and a radio receiver that you can tune to 145.990 MHz FM. A police band scanner or a hand-talkie ham radio would work just fine.Anyone with the necessary kit should check out the SuitSat site to get predictor software to catch the SuitSat transmissions as it passes overhead - in the USA it passes over twice a day - usually between midnight and 4 AM.