SuitSat on Friday

[TinEar]

The following is something we can try to hear this Friday. This news release came from NASA.
*****************************************
Unusual Satellite Transmits Voices of Maryland Students Worldwide

GREENBELT, Md., Feb. 1 /PRNewswire/ -- Just before 6 p.m. EST this Friday, the crew aboard the International Space Station will deploy an unusual satellite called "SuitSat." During a planned spacewalk, the two station crew members will release an unmanned Russian spacesuit into space.
This new satellite will transmit the recorded voices of female students from Paint Branch High School and Eastern Middle School in Silver Spring, Md., that anyone with a HAM radio can hear.
"SuitSat is a Russian brainstorm," explains Frank Bauer of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "Some of our Russian partners in the ISS program had an idea. Maybe we can turn old spacesuits into useful satellites." SuitSat is the first test of that idea.
SuitSat consists of a Russian Orlan spacesuit with three batteries, a radio transmitter and internal sensors to measure temperature and battery power. SuitSat will help scientists determine the durability of spacesuits, the life of the batteries that power the suit, and if a tumbling suit affects the clarity of radio transmissions. It will lay the groundwork for SuitSats of the future.
The SuitSat will transmit one of three types of messages for 30 seconds, pause for 30 seconds, and then repeat.
The transmission begins with "This is SuitSat-1, RS0RS," followed by a prerecorded greeting in six languages. The greeting contains "special words" in English, French, Japanese, Russian, German and Spanish, for students to record and decipher. Awards will be given to students who correctly identify the message. The English-language greetings were recorded by the two Maryland students.
The next message will detail SuitSat's telemetry: temperature, battery power and mission elapsed time. "The telemetry is stated in plain language -- in English," says Bauer. "Everyone will be privy to SuitSat's condition. It 'talks' using a voice synthesizer. It's pretty amazing." The transmission ends with a slow scan television picture.
"All you need is an antenna (the bigger the better) and a radio receiver that you can tune to 145.990 MHz FM," Bauer added. "A police scanner or a hand-held ham radio will work just fine."
SuitSat is sponsored by an international working group called Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS). It consists of volunteers from national amateur radio societies and the internationally-based Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation (AMSAT). For more information about the spacewalk, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/station

For more information about SuitSat, visit:

http://SuitSat.org

or

http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/index.php

SOURCE NASA

 

[raceman005]

this is going to be fun to listen to. The pictures from those sites are awesome.

 

[ka3jjz]

I managed to talk with one of the hardware designers on the way home from work on 440 this afternoon; the transmitter is an old Kenwood HT, running 500 mw into a 1/4 wave that's mounted on the helmet.

Current thinking is that this will last perhaps a week or two; it's really an unknown as to how long it will actually last, given temperature variances and how long the batteries will last. If the suit should start to tumble, it could make receiving the signal a great deal more difficult as it fades in and out from your station perspective.

As for the SSTV part; I've never fooled around with that particular mode; however, I'm told that MMSSTV is very good, and it's free; they even have a MM-SSTV Yahoo Group for support. Mac users can get SSTV software - and several other modes, too - from our local source Black Cat Systems - it's called MultiMode I don't know of any software for Linux, but surely there is some. Perhaps someone will jump in here to supply the URL. The mode, as I understand it, will be Robot 36.

Hooking up the scanner to use this software is no more difficult than the steps I've mentioned in the Recording Software wiki. In fact, there are a few free recording packages that will allow you to record the signal and play it back later. Scanner Recorder is the favorite of many - and it too is free.

Finally I think the first passes for Maryland come very early Sat morning - at 2 and 4 am.
73s and good hunting....Mike

 

[n3ijw]

I understand the D700 on the ISS will most likely be crossband repeating SuitSat onto 437.80 too.

 

[TinEar]

Activity at 10:15 p.m. on 145.990. Heard a mention of SuitSat but it's not from the satellite. It sounds like some mook transmitting on the freq. Someone else comes up and calls him "very stupid." The first person then speaks in poor, fractured Russian.

10:22 p.m. Have a male voice saying this is SuitSat and giving conditions as the satellite sythesized voice was supposed to do but this doesn't sound synthesized. Sounds like some jerk playing on his ham rig.

 

[Llwellyn]

Nothing copied at my location; I'm listening with an open squelch through earphones just in case I can pick up some faint stuff. I'm not optimistic though.

Reports from www.suitsat.org are very dim in outlook; people with massive antennas aren't picking this thing up. Very few stations reporting any success at all. Only time will tell!

 

[baybum]

"The SuitSat will transmit one of three types of messages for 30 seconds, pause for 30 seconds, and then repeat. "

Is it accurate to assume that every 30 seconds, 24X7, for the next week or so, this thing transmits?
Just want to make sure I'm reading everything right.

Mike

 

[Llwellyn]

That's the gist of it, Mike. No one knows how long the batteries will last, they're thinking more like two days rather than a week. It will take a couple of weeks at least supposedly before it falls out of orbit and burns up; they expect the batteries to be long gone at that point.

Someone with the callsign KA3OUT reported an affirmative receive at about 2220hrs but most people are reporting no luck.

EDIT: 2309hrs, NASA-TV is reporting a likely failure of the suit and thinks the batteries are too cold to operate.

EDIT 2: It's not going to pass directly overhead until between 0230 and 0400... but that may be a moot point.

 

[TinEar]

That's the way I read it too Mike. However, from the report Llwellyn provided, the outlook seems dim. I still don't know the orbits and times to expect it overhead our area so it's a crapshoot at this point.

 

[Llwellyn]

It will pass over Portugal, Spain, and France within the next 20-30 minutes. Still seeing reports that they think it has failed. Only time will tell at this point. I hope they're wrong and some people, especially the schoolchildren anticipating this, get to hear it.

 

[baybum]

I agree, it's a shame to get the kids all fired up only to have a total failure.
But I guess that's why they call it an experiment.

 

[rdale]

NASA says it has failed - batteries likely got too cold and the experiment is dead.

 

[raceman005]

Fox news put up a picture along with a story,.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,183714,00.html

 

[ka3jjz]

Yeah, I made a remote recording with RecAll, but just with indoor antennas, I doubt I got anything even remotely usable.

Re the mook that came up on freq - there's always going to be some idiot who is going to try to ruin what could have been a good thing. It's a sad commentary, but just like all hobbies, there are a few bad apples in the ham ranks, too. 73s Mike