Here is an excerpt from the latest NASA report on the ISS; it describes the
failure of the SuitSat.
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Report #5=20
11:30 p.m. CST, Friday, Feb. 3, 2006
Mission Control Center, Houston
Space station crew members released a spacesuit-turned-satellite during the
second spacewalk of their mission last night. Called SuitSat, it faintly
transmitted recorded voices of schoolchildren to amateur radio operators
worldwide for a brief period before it ceased sending signals.
Expedition 12 Commander Bill McArthur and Flight Engineer Valery Tokarev
ventured outside for a five-hour, 43-minute spacewalk to release SuitSat,
conduct preventative maintenance to a cable-cutting device, retrieve experiments
and photograph the station's exterior. Clad in Russian Orlan spacesuits,
McArthur and Tokarev opened the hatch to begin the spacewalk at 5:44 p.m. EST. It
was the fourth career spacewalk for McArthur and the second for Tokarev.
After setting up tools and equipment, they positioned the unneeded Orlan
spacesuit on a ladder by the station's Pirs airlock hatch. The suit reached the
end of its operational life for spacewalks in August 2004. It was outfitted by
the crew with three batteries, internal sensors and a radio transmitter for
this experiment.
The SuitSat provided recorded greetings in six languages to ham radio
operators for about two orbits of the Earth before it stopped transmitting, perhaps
due to its batteries failing in the cold environment of space, according to
amateur radio coordinators affiliated with the station program. The suit will
enter the atmosphere and burn up in a few weeks. Tokarev pushed the suit away
toward the aft end of the station as the complex flew 225 miles above the
south central Pacific Ocean. The suit initially drifted away at a rate of about
a half meter per second, slowly floating out of view below the Zvezda
Service Module and its attached Progress cargo craft. The suit is now separating
from the station at a rate of about six kilometers every 90 minutes. . .
or maybe I'm just making myself feel better. But I mean hey, is it really specific to Maryland or Colorado? Is it an aircraft? nah
