[On Friday], giddy astronauts on the International Space Station will intentionally jettison one of their older colleagues into Earth orbit.
It’s no homicide, though. The “colleague” is a defunct spacesuit retooled to be one of the most unusual satellites ever launched.
The satellite, named SuitSat-1 (also called Radioskaf, or Radio Sputnik, in Russian), is designed to broadcast transmissions to students and amateur radio operators around the world.
If the preliminary experiment works—if ham radios pick up SuitSat-1’s transmissions—astronauts may routinely use old spacesuits for satellite experiments, Bauer says.
For example, a SuitSat equipped with a video camera and other sensors could relay images and data as it falls into Earth’s atmosphere.
Cool.
Did they steal this suit from MTV?
Ya, cool, I have wanted to do some space work on my radios (I bet my Alinco DR-605 could do it nicely, this radio is a true duel band 2 metters and 70 centimetters the classic space bands from what I have read, also the freq for the suit is 145.990 MHz FM at 5 watts) I just dont have the antennas for that type of work.
Also Commander Bill McArthur also got his Worked all States and Worked all Continents done he was working as NA1SS
de KB3HCG