Using an Old Space-Suit as a Satellite

Andrew-Unit writes "The ARRL has an interesting article about an amateur satellite project where some amateur radio electronics will be crammed into an old spacesuit and chucked out of the window of the International Space Station."

Comments

Re:Space Junk

[heli0]

FTA:

Once deployed, SuitSat is expected to orbit the planet for several weeks before burning up when it enters Earth's atmosphere.

Amateur radio is pretty interesting.

[caluml]

I find it amazing (and heartening) that in this world of money, and greed, that some people will build satellites, and get them launched into space, purely so Amateur Radio hams can bounce off them and talk all around the world. I've never done it myself, but I've watched someone going in on 2 metres, and hearing their output on 10. You only get a few minutes before the satellite disappears below the horizon again, but it's still cool.
You could also listen to Mir on 143.625.

Amateur radio??

[madaxe42]

It seems the only 'amateur radio' equipment to be included is a single transmitter - everything else is going to be a bunch of CDs with school artwork on them - it's not clear whether the contents of the CDs are to be transmitted, or just, rather pointlessly, IMHO, held in orbit....

Re:Why do we need a spacesuit??

[RevengeOfPoopJuggler]

Probably for radiation protection.

Re:ok the spacesuit is feasible

[Chanc_Gorkon]

RTFA. It's a OLD Orlon spacesuit. One they are not using. It's cheaper for them to do that and let it burn up in the atmosphere then it will be for them to send it back on a Soyuz or Shuttle.

ISS has a history of supporting Amateur Radio

[VE3ECM]

Not only have there been quite a few astro/cosmonauts that are licensed amateurs, but they maintain a functional Amateur Radio station on the ISS.

Contacts made from/to the ISS

Official NASA ISS Amateur Radio Page

ARRL ISS Page

It's incredibly easy to talk to the ISS from the earth... you don't need a particularily high-powered radio to do it. In fact, the radio on the ISS is a plain jane, Kenwood dual-band radio.

Wierd expectation.

[reality-bytes]

That would seem to indicate that if the ISS didnt make any prograde burns, it too would be entering the atmosphere in several weeks.

I say wierd because I had presumed that ISS, like Mir would take a few months to reach an unrecoverable orbit which would lead to a re-entry.

SO, they throw it downwards when they launch the suit? Well, Im no physicist - and this is only what I remember from my school days; if you were to throw something downwards with the maximum force available to a human from the ISS, then the object would return to you hours or days later because its angular velocity in relation to the orbit wouldnt have changed.

In order to actually alter the continous orbit of the suit as you launch it, you would have to either throw the suit out ahead of the ISS (To make it go higher) or throw it backwards along the ISS orbit to make it go lower.

However, I would rather suspect that an overhand throw of a spacesuit wouldnt make any siginificant difference in the time taken for re-entry to occur.

Come to think of it. - Every force has an equal and opposite. which indicates that the ISS crew are going to have to fashion some sort of rocket to get the suit going. - A small compresses air cylinder would come to mind but would be hard to aim. You could of course blow it from the airlock but youd have to correct the ISS orbit using Progress afterwards.

Re:Wierd expectation.

[FireFury03]

That would seem to indicate that if the ISS didnt make any prograde burns, it too would be entering the atmosphere in several weeks.

According to Wikipedia, "The station, on average, loses 100 meters of altitude per day." (and is periodically reorbitted).

Of course the station has much higher mass compared to the suit. Since (for a given exposed surface area) the atmospheric drag is the same but the mass is less for the suit, the drag will decellerate the suit at a higher rate to the station. Obviously the surface areas aren't the same, but the station is waaaay heavier. As the orbitting object slows down, it loses altitude and drops into thicker atmosphere so a reasonably small difference in the drag:mass ratio to start with leads to an amplified effect as time goes on.

Come to think of it. - Every force has an equal and opposite. which indicates that the ISS crew are going to have to fashion some sort of rocket to get the suit going.

Again, the mass of the station is hugely more than the mass of the suit so the effect on the station is tiny. Besides, does it matter if you alter the station's velocity slightly? It makes sense to throw the suit towards the "back" of the station since otherwise you might catch up with it as it slows down - throwing the suit backwards increases the station's orbital velocity slightly, increasing the altitude of the orbit (which simply means you leave it a bit longer before you have to reboost the station's orbit). And you don't need to worry about upsetting the station's attitude since it has gyroscopes to maintain that.

On a related note, read up on the use of gyroscopes for attitude control on space craft - it's very interesting. The gyroscopes provide a "fixed" object to rotate the spacecraft around, so you can maintain the attitude of the craft by simply rotating the craft around the gyroscopes with electric motors instead of having to fire reaction control thrusters (which uses valuable fuel that you have to fly up from ground).

Re:Why do we need a spacesuit??

[Anonymous Coward]

What does a spacesuit provide?

Shade, cooling, gas pressure retention, and various electrical services like a radio. Some of these sound useful to an electrical device (mainly the cooling - probably the biggest problem for electrical equipment thrown into space is cooling, because it's hard to do convective cooling without gas!).

I don't think a spacesuit provides much defence against radiation, though there will be some. It will give somewhat more protection against micrometeorites and orbiting flecks of paint.

But as far as I can see, it will only provide this protection for hours - perhaps a day or so at most. The simplest purpose-built container will do a better job.

Re:Why a spacesuit?

[Anonymous Coward]

The space suit was required at one point, so they paid to send it up. The requirement is complete, so they got what they paid for. Now, anything that they can do with it after that is "gravy*".

It's not like they are going "Gee, if we send things to space and then call them surplus, they are free".

*SpaceGravy on the ISS just *tastes* like an old space suit. It's not really made from one. We swear.

High earth orbiting satellites too

[N3Bruce]

In the past, hams have had some high earth orbiting birds up as well, which have allowed worldwide QSOs. Oscar 4, AO-10, AO-13, and AO-40 were high earth orbiting satellites, capable of worldwide QSOs and extended operating windows up to 10 hours long or more. Sadly, none of these satellites is currently considered operational. Of these, AO-10 is brain dead and has no attitude control, but occasionally the solar panels and the antennas line up in a favorable orientation as it tumbles through space, and communications are occasionally possible. AO-13 and AO-4 have reentered the atmosphere, after partial failure of their secondary boosters, but provided some service. AO-40 suffered a crippling explosion onboard about a month after launch, but was partially recovered and provided an S-band downlink, along with uplinks on 70cm, 23cm, and 3cm IIRC. It suffered a catastrophic battery failure in January, 2004 and has been silent ever since.

Not to be discouraged, a new satellite, currently designated as Phase 3E is being prepared for launch by and will hopefully reach orbit later in 2005 or early 2006.