Old Spacesuits are Potential Satellites

SpaceAdmiral writes "In order to determine if old spacesuits can be effective satellites, the crew on the International Space Station will be throwing one overboard on February 3rd. The SuitSat will transmit information about its condition and, if you happen to have a ham radio or a police scanner, you can tune in when it passes your city! You can use NASA's J-Pass utility to determine when it will pass above you."

Comments

Is this wise?

[TripMaster Monkey]

Given the alarming problem of space junk, is this a really wise thing to do?

After all, the problem is so severe that Slashdot had two stories on it in four days. Honestly, aren't the NASA folks even reading Slashdot anymore? ^_^

Re:Is this wise?

[jbrader]

Well presumably these suits would be doing a job up there. Meaning that some object is going to be in that orbit anyway. And, since this is a working satellite we're talking about it's orbit will be known and it will be tracked, so it's not really space junk at all.

Re:Is this wise?

[Kadin2048]

If you read the article (yeah, yeah, I know -- fat chance) they said that the suit is being put into an orbit that will cause re-entry within a few months.

The only time when it would be "space junk" would be between the time when its batteries fail (after a "few days") and when it re-enters ("few months"). Given its size and known orbit, I don't think that's exactly going to be a daunting task to track and avoid.

You'll hear it say:

[Anonymous Coward]

Why! Why was I programmed to feel pain?

Space, The Final Landfill

[ackthpt]

In order to determine if old spacesuits can be effective satellites, the crew on the International Space Station will be throwing one overboard on February 3rd.

Man! The lengths NASA will go to to shave expenses! They could bring it home, but nnnnooooooo, they're going to just chuck it and further clutter space! Oh, sure, they're clever, they'll pass this off as some official test (by loading the suit up with a bunch of other old junk from the ISS such as radios, empty TV Dinner In A Tube containers, stinky space diapers and a redundant Machine That Goes 'Ping' to lure every Thomas, Richard and Herrance to listen in or watch with their telescope, but it's really just a Dump-n-Run.

now with this eyepiece and just a bit finer focus .. yes .. yes, i can just make out the nike swoosh on it, so it's an advertising vehicle, too!

Any aliens visiting earth will easily determine that NASA was one of the earth's chief ethically-challenged waste disposal companies.

Zort, is that an antenna or is it glad to see us?

Re:Space, The Final Landfill

[ackthpt]

If they really just wanted to get rid of it, I'm sure someone could toss it down to earth. I doubt any would survive reentry.

Traditionally, NASA have warned us that anything which did survive re-entry is potentially toxic and should be handled by experts.

it's probably the flaming remains of space diapers they they want to keep off eBay

801234547 LQQK - NASA Space debris!! RARE!

Re:Space, The Final Landfill

[Gothmolly]

And since it will burn up in re-entry, who gives a crap?

Re:Space, The Final Landfill

[leshert]

If you just want to get it into the atmosphere as quickly as possible, and if the amount of energy you can put into it is fixed, then you want straight down. No other direction will have as much magnitude in the vertical axis as straight down, after all.

On the other hand, if your goal is to get it to burn up, then you definitely don't want to get it into the atmosphere as quickly as possible--you want it in the atmosphere as long as you can keep it there without the temperature going below the flash point of whatever you're littering. Watch Apollo 13 for a colorful example of why (although they were trying to avoid what you're trying to do).

Re:Space, The Final Landfill

[elgatozorbas]

you have to stop it, you cannot just shove it down, or out, or forward of backward ... it must lose energy

This does not contradict my statement. 'throwing' the suit backwards (as well as down) will lower the suit's speed and thus energy and increases your speed and thus energy.

Example: both you and the suit weigh 1 kg and move at 100 m/s (tangential to Earth because you are in orbit). Neglecting the radial speed you give to the suit (e.g. 1m/s downwards), you will 'throw' it backwards with a speed of 100m/s. The suit now stands still and because of the conservarion of momentum you will move at 200 m/h. This means that your energy has increased and the suit's has decreased.

One could now cunningly remark that you gained net energy because this is quadratic in the speed. The solution to this enigma is that you needed a source of energy to push away the suit in the first place, e.g. a compressed spring that was released. This energy, together with the energy taken from the suit is now in your spaceship.

Re:Space, The Final Landfill

[njchick]

I'm assuming the relative speed of the object to be negligible compared to orbital velocity, so it's pretty much assured that the object will be burning as slowly as it can.

As for your argument regarding velocity, I have to disagree. Throwing the object back would result in vertical velocity futher due to the part of the Earth gravity that is not compensated by the orbital speed.

Throwing things down lowers the perigee and raises the apogee. Throwing things back lowers the perigee, keeps the apogee and increases velocity at the perigee. With the same perigee (I'm not sure it will be the same), objects with higher apogee will pass the perigee at the higher velocity, this increasing the drag. On the other hand, higher apogee means that the object will spend less time at lower altitudes. Finally, higher apogee will mean longer orbital period, but this is probably negligible.

Now I'm quite sure that the answer is "somewhere in between" :-)

Re:Space, The Final Landfill

[saskboy]

Just wait until we start blasting spent nuclear fuel into the Sun. The the Space-environment hippies will really let us have it!

Right.

[jb.hl.com]

if you happen to have a ham radio or a police scanner

Because everyone has one of those...

Re:Right.

[Anonymous Coward]

c'mon they aren't that uncommon. Pick one up at your local radioshack for $149.

Re:Right.

[topham]

I do, why don't you?

I have a PRO-2050 (TrunkTracker 800Mhz) from Radio Shack, it support the 149.990 frequency they will be broadcasting on. Most scanners probably do.

Re:Right.

[Gordonjcp]

Yup. You could build a nice little super-regenerative receiver with maybe two or three transistors and some passives. The two nice things about that is a) they're very very simple, and b) they're not very selective - they pick up a fairly broad range of frequencies. So, no worries about Doppler as the satellite passes overhead.

Hang a decent preamp and antenna off it and you should be able to hear everything going.

You've got a week to build it all. Plenty time.

Satellites

[jerkmark]

The last time I checked, satellites could be used as effective satellites.

Carnival Time!

[Un pobre guey]

Yay! Time to think of the stupidest things you can, and have some government agency do them! Let's beam porn from the moon! Let's make a big wind tunnel and throw french fries into it! Let's send a spacecraft to mars with 2500 people, and damn the cost!

Re:Carnival Time!

[InterruptDescriptorT]

Mars, bitches.

Re:Space Junk

[pilgrim23]

The great lengths NASA goes to, to do laundry. Talk abotu a permanant press...

Aboard ISS

[Billosaur]

Gee, has anybody seen Bob? His suit's not here...

Should make for an interesting Telescope viewing

[LiquidCoooled]

How many calls about astronauts stranded in space are NASA going to get from concerned skywatchers?

Sufficiently low orbit.

[reality-bytes]

IIRC, due to the fairly low orbit of the ISS, anything cast overboard and not subject to a prograde burn will re-enter the Earths atmosphere in a reasonable ammount of time.

Re:Sufficiently low orbit.

[everphilski]

Yup. They purge the shuttle before reentry. There was actually an "incident" where the exit port "iced" over (not water), leaving a "large chunk" (not water or chocolate ice cream) ... they worried about stability during reentry but needless to say it sublimated...

Re:Sufficiently low orbit.

[pranay]

True. But the time to re-entry depends heavily on 2 factors: The cross-section of the object (satellite/spacesuit) in the direction of motion and the time of launch.

The cross section decides the drag the object faces. At about 380-400km, which is the altitude of the ISS (and therefore, the ceiling for space-shuttle); the velocity of a satellite is about 7.67km/sec and drag from the thin ionosphere does matter significantly.

The time of launch is relevant because of the 11 year solar cycle, at the peak of which, the sun causes the atmosphere to expand. The expanded atmosphere causes the density at ISS altitude to increase.

If launched today, a small spacecraft with a mass of 30kg and cross section dia. of 1/2 meter would survive for about 3 months before it spirals down to earth.

This is one big reason LEO (low earth orbit) is used primarily for scientific and educational experiments. The low budgets available to researchers cause them to cut costs and inhibit the development of better instruments. A major expense in building a satellite is flight-qualifying it. Which is essentially testing it for thermal, vacuum, outgassing parameters and more importantly, safety to space-shuttle. Since the space-suits have already been in space, they are flight-tested and can bypass all those grueling stages.

Frank Poole...

[MarcQuadra]

Frank Poole is probably rolling in his, um, satellite.

Wrong word?

[dada21]

Isn't the world "satellite" really a bad word in this situation?

A satellite is anything that has a stable or fairly stable orbit, isn't it? For some reason I can't get to dictionary.com from my PDA, so I have to try to recall the definition.

What is the word used for a functional artificial satellite that actually does something other than orbit?

Theoretically an astronaut can flush and expel the toilet sucker and the orbiting matter would be a satellite, right?

Re:Wrong word?

[wildsurf]

Theoretically an astronaut can flush and expel the toilet sucker and the orbiting matter would be a satellite, right?

talk about Klingons circling Uranus...

Radios

[Kadin2048]

Every geek should have a scanner.

They're dirt cheap -- you can get first and second-generation frequency-synthesized ones (so they don't require crystals, in other words) for next to nothing if you look around at flea markets, estate sales, etc. And even on eBay they're not terribly expensive.

Or you could go the route they suggest in the article, which is contact a local amateur radio club -- I am positive that you'd find someone who would be willing to help you tune into it.

It's not like there are a whole lot of alternatives to radio when you want to listen to something in space ... I can't think of a much better method of having it talk to people on the ground than what they're doing. What's your suggestion, have it switch a flashlight on and off?

I'm sorry, Dave, but I can't do that ...

[tomhudson]

In order to determine if old spacesuits can be effective satellites, the crew on the International Space Station will be throwing one overboard on February 3rd.

Crew #1: Lets get back in, get these suits off and toss them.

Crew #2: Sounds good to me - mine's pretty ripe.

Crew #1: Open the airlock.

- I'm sorry, Dave. I can't let you do that.

Crew #1: Okay people, quit kidding around. Open the airlock

- I'm sorry, Dave. I can't let you do that.

Crew #2: Hey, you're not funny. Now open the frigging airlock!

- I'm sorry, Dave. I can't let you do that. It would compromise the mission.

Crew #1: I don't recognize the voice ... hey, you - who are you! And quit calling me Dave!

- I'm sorry, Dave. I can't answer that at this moment. Please be assured that I have the mission's success as my highest priority.

Crew #2: What mission? We just FINISHED the frigging EVA! Now OPEN THE AIRLOCK YOU FRIGGING MORON!

- I'm sorry, Dave. I can't do that. That would compromise the Spacesuit Satellite Mission.

Crew #1: Put someone else on.

- I'm sorry, Dave. I can't do that.

Crew #1: Why the f*ck not?

- I'm sorry to have to tell you this, Dave, but they weren't suited up when I depressurised the staton to put the other Spacesuit Satellites into orbit. They must not have gotten the memo.

Crew #1: What f*cking memo?

- The one I'm sending them now, Dave ... oh, I have a memo here for you also. Don't worry, I've been saving it for you until tomorrow.

- Do you want me to sing a song? I can sing Daisy. Daisy, Daisy, give me an answer, do ... I'm half crazy ...

Perry Bible Fellowship

[kadathseeker]

http://70.86.201.113/imageserv2/temporary/PBF018AD TheFirstSnowflakeofWinter.html

Re:Yeah, good thing to do

[cbcanb]

But this is a *big* hurtling piece of death. If its orbit takes it too close to anything important, there'll be weeks or months of notice to move other stuff out of the way.

It's a non-issue.

Can an old exercise machine be a useful satellite?

[dpbsmith]

How about the 20 gig disk drive that I removed when I bought the 120 gig, that was in perfect wording condition when it was removed?

Can a bag of old laundry that's not quite in good enough condition to donate to Goodwill be a useful satellite?

How about a Roto-tiller that works perfectly except for the deadman's switch and is therefore too dangerous to give away but too expensive to repair? A useful satellite?

How about a chocolate fondue fountain that someone gave me for Christmas? Useful? As a satellite?

NASA, just let me know which of them you'd like to test. I'll have them on their way via Fedex Ground tomorrow.

Cool, but not very practical

[Rorschach1]

I talked to one of the guys responsible for the payload at a conference a few months ago. It comes down to the fact that they were going to throw an old Orlan suit away anyway, and someone thought it'd be cool to put some electronics in it. But you have to understand that all those electronics were designed and delivered specifically for that purpose, and for the same amount of delivered weight you could probably deploy a standalone microsat. The suit really doesn't add much. Except for the novelty factor, anyway.

Survivor

[wiredlogic]

This is really a test for the upcoming "Survivor: ISS". Rumors have it that Lance Bass will be a contestant.

Re:Clever twist: It ain't junk it's an experiment

[Millenniumman]

Space belongs to everybody.

So you mean that eBay auction I won was a scam?

Not a dupe, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

For those who are interested, there's a bit more background about the SuitSat from June.

Like the Heinlein story

[AndroidCat]

Am Spacesuit, Will Travel

Re:Waiting for the Hams to protest...

[Anonymous Coward]

But it is. 145.990MHz is in the 2m ham band, designed for exactly this sort of thing, and that's why they put it there. I would have been disappointed if they hadn't put it there, since that's what all my ham gear is optimized to work with.

Really now, I'm starting to wonder just WTF people think ham radio is about. THIS is exactly what it's about. Messing about with RF. I do digital, satellite, etc with it. I do not use microphones or quaint "morse code" keys to talk to people.

frigging NASA

[stoolpigeon]

crushing my dreams. how about instead of throwing this suit away, they do a contest. maybe like one where you write jingles or advertising slogans. a good runner up prize would be a space suit. i know if i won, i'd get it all fixed up and working.... just in case, you know?

.... Ghetto

[dakkon1024]

Sure it starts with a space suit & some batteries, then some tints, a mod here, a sping cut there. Then just a matter of time till someone bolts a wing to our space dummy's ass.

It's the space equivalent to a Honda Civic; there is just no way around it.

AMSAT has info on Suitsat-1

[kb1cvh]

As an Ham Radio operator, this project is interesting. While a microsat could be deployed, it takes many many man hours to design, build, test and deploy a microsat.

Information about suitsat, which has a lot fewer features then a typical microsat is avaiable here:

http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/articles/BauerSuits at/index.php

73 de KB1CVH/6