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SuitSat Not Looking Good So Far
Hulboy writes "According to the SuitSat website, things aren't going well for the makeshift satellite in it's first few hours. 'Reports of nothing heard from Israel, Turkey, South Africa, and two negative reports from Japan as well as the weak report below. JH3XCU reports signal only heard in SSB mode, TX cycle and doppler detectable, but no modulation... this is not looking good.'
This is why the space program is failing, they can't even launch satellites now. They had to resort to dumping an old space suit, but they didn't even manage to do that right. Yeeesh.
Here's to hoping China or Russia can do a better job.
NOTE: You may want to get an engineer to take a look at your humour chip if you take this post seriously.
some other lab animal.. that would really suck if we couldn't talk to them during their final descent.
Mrs. Jetson washed it instead of drycleaning!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The suit itself: http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/articles/BauerSuits at/index.php
People that heard suitsat - looks like it went offline about 1hr 15min into flight.
http://suitsat.org/
Please stop APK.. you're only hurting yourself.
Oh. We thought it was trash and scooped it up. Sorry. We'll drop it off somewhere the next time we're back to probe some rednecks.
Two orbits and it was fucked.
... why not stuff it in a suit, put some weak radio shit in there, and ... call it an EXPERIMENT!!! For the science and the children!! Think of the children!!!!!
... got that right.
My bet: there was something aboard ISS that was unsafe (alien maybe, bad yogurt experiment, etc) that needed to be dumped
confirm you're not a script,
please type the word in this image:"tiring"
Help them out here: http://suitsat.org/
gcc: no input sig
...buffering...
No, you have the wrong number. This is four-two-FOUR-six. I suspect you need more practice working your telephone machine. Not at all. Ahoy!
"I'm going to f***ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to f***ing kill Google"
It is the ISS (Internaional Space Station)
The suit is an old Russian space suit.
So take your comment and cram it... I also hate that everyone presumes that when smart people conduct an experiment that they expect a successful result. Anyone who has worked in research can tell you that is just flat out wrong. I've had projects go completely wrong and still learned a great many things from them. It's like Edison's remark about knowing a multitude of new ways NOT to manufacture a lightbulb... It's just as important in making the journey to accomplish the goal successfully.
Either that or the military just wanted to see if they could track something as small as a man in order to rescue it or shoot it down. If A = B, then B = A, get it? If the military can accurately track a single spacesuit in orbit then they can, from orbit, track a person on the ground. A single person. Same weather, same radio noise, same visuals, just at a different end of the transmission. That's why I think the radio bit is a sham. They're tracking *visually*. There hasn't been any real science done up there in ages and NASA is scraping the bottom of the barrel thinking of bogus science ideas to give cover to military tests like the "suit sat." But then, that was always what the ISS was about.
I applaud the obscenely rich people who went to ISS. Their demonstration of demand for space tourism will eventually destroy the government's stranglehold on LEO space travel and put it in the hands of the people who are paying anyway. I also applaud the military; they're doing what we're paying them to do. I just don't like the weak, visionless monsters we keep electing (from either "party") to control the military and govern us. Something about the difference between a politician and a statesman, between "govern" and "herd."
But then, we asked for it.
I hope they get another chance to try again. I had my scanner all ready to hear the SuitCast. I don't have an iPod to download it to, though. Just my PodBrain.
"Current thinking is SuitSat is transmitting, but far weaker than expected. Several reliable reports of short snatches of the voice and SSTV signals have been reported. It is recommended that you continue to listen during passes over your area."
Kaetemi
Blame the airhead that is controlling the damn thing.
I had my PC monitoring for the SSTV image, but got nothing but two frames of static. According to the WEBsite, it was supposed to flyby this area at 1am and 4am.
I am disappointed that it seems to already be malfunctioning. I imagine that the kids in those schools around the world are even more upset.
Willie...
... to keep track of. Great. Perhaps in the future we should be more careful with the things we put into orbit. Every time we do something trivial like this, it means cleaning it all up later is going to be that much more difficult.
The ISS crew wanted to install a radio transmitter in an old space suit and kick this outside. It would circle the world for a few days and stop transmission because of battery exhaustion. Apparently it stopped working long before that. This is very unfortunate because a lot of people were anticipating the 'launch' (i.e. astronauts kicking it out of the window) and there was some kind of puzzle or contest for schoolchildren (listen to the transmissions and note a special word or something). It was covered on /. a few days ago.
Caveat: This post may contain typos. ^_^
People ARE reporting very weak contacts.
(Although some people are clearly mistaking the signals coming from the ISS with the SatSuit too).
So it is likely that the suit is still on the air, but radiating a lot lower signal than they planned.
I'm still planning on trying to hear it the next two passes here. 11 degrees and 72 degrees. Don't have fancy az/el antennas, but I've worked the ISS and AO-27 from here so I should stand a chance.
Grunts away!
I didn't know Real Networks had in on this project.
space is pretty cool.
I was up at 0355L this morning to catch the second (and best) pass to see if I could hear anything and heard nothing... BUT I gave it another shot at 1021L this morning and heard data (somewhat strong at one point...) but not enough to decode. So there still is hope... As for another piece of junk floating around up there it will fall back to earth in about 6 weeks...
I think the way Edison settled on wasn't exactly the best way TO make a lightbulb.
http://www.banthebulb.org/
my friend, we have been tracking stuff smaller (as small as 10 cm) than a space suit for a long time !! USSTRATCOM
and BTW if you read this NASA press release it says that the SuitSat idea was "Russian Brainstorm" to do something with all the old Soviet spacesuits laying around (I assume as a money making venture) this does not have much of a conspiracy theory feel to it IMHO, but I guess one could say that "In Soviet Russia the Spacesuit wears You !!"
Now they've made it sound like anyone with a cheap receiver and a rubber duck antenna will be able to easily pick up this thing's signal full quieting from their basement. Keep in mind we don't know where it is other than "space" (which is rather far away from anyone on earth), it's transmitting at a low wattage, and it's impossible to predict the polarization of its antenna. Give it some time, set your SSTV software up to wait all day for a signal, and try an eggbeater antenna. It's still up there and it's apparently still transmitting.
You do understand where astronauts go to the bathroom, don't you? Hmmm, why was THAT suit expendible? Who was sick? We want to know.
"I don't know what happened to that drunken cosmonaut, the last thing he said was he's going for a walk..."
It passes right over my house in northern Minnesota.Nasa allerts me by email,giving the time direction and duration of visability.It looks like a very bright star at -1.I searched the sky hoping to see the suit trailng behind the station,even though they said it would not be visable.I searched and found nothing trailing the station.The temp at 6:10am was 4 degrees farenheit with 40 mph winds.
In the good old days when drinking and driving was a recreational sport.We would make a wish everytime we threw a empty beer can out the window.I would suggest NASA do the same each time they throw debris from the station.It cant hurt.
Suddenly, the astronauts onboard ISS Remembered protocol
/ \
. O -- Arghhh!
. -==X==-
. |
. / \
.
Perhaps they shouldv removed frank from the suit before kicking it out.
Personally I think the suit has been hit by something and is now oriented badly for pickup by earth based people.
Can the folks onboard ISS see it still or has it gone over the horizon?
Why cant I get this silly lameness filter to vanish?
liqbase
... and was able to sneak out a copy of a comm transcript. TDRS picked up the signal at S+30 minutes (*).
... not funny guys. Houston, EVA3, do you read? ISS, EVA3, do you read? Come on guys, pick me up.
SuitSat (SS): (static)
CAPCOM: EVA3, Houston. Please maintain radio silence.
SS: Houston! EVA3. EVA1 and EVA2 insisted that I maintain radio silence during my initiation, too. However, they haven't picked me up yet, and the SAFER pack does not seem to be functional.
CAPCOM: EVA3, Houston. We have lost signal from the experimental AMSAT transmitter you are carrying. Is it suffering from an obvious malfunction?
SS: I had to remove its battery to power my suit. It lost power ten minutes after I was thrown overboard.
CAPCOM: EVA3, replace the transmitter's battery. Completion of its transmission was a condition of the low fare on your secret flight.
SS: Houston, the contract didn't state that I'd be free-floating without power during the transmission!
CAPCOM: Look Bass, why do you think we only charged to for a one-way flight?
SS: GAAAAAH! F*@$ you all, and all of Houston too, you dirty (LOSS OF SIGNAL)
PAO thought we should keep this under wraps, but I think the word needs to get out. Our new adminstrator deserves a metal for this.
(*): "Spacing plus thirty minutes."
I went through the AMSAT site and some others and couldn't find any mention of what they used, just that is was 28 volts.
I wonder if they relied on an aqueous based chemistry, which degrades rapidly below 0 C or did actually use something good for lower temps like LiSO2.
Just curious.
Also, did they even try to put this setup into a temperature/pressure chamber to see how it would work while on the ground?
Why go through the expense and problems of rocketing a satellite from earth when you stuff the electronics in some handy space trash? It's giving me ideas the next time my trash gets picked up.
Evidently most of the people who've replied on here don't have a clue about amateur radio either. A big part of amateur radio is experimentation and if it doesn't work, you figure out why and do it again. Hopefully with your adjustments, corrections and redesigns your experiment will become a working item. After all, how do you think all the neat modes in amateur radio were developed? Trial and error.
/.ers have no clue about working QRP (low power radio)-I mean, the thing is miles above earth transmitting on 500mW of power. Some personal stereos put out more power than that.
/. are about anything that doesn't have to do with Linux or MP3s.
Most
But, if anyone checks, there's another unused spacesuit and more equipment on the ISS. Oh, by the way, it's ARISS (Amateur Radio on the International Space Station) http://www.rac.ca/ariss that did this, not NASA.
If people RTFA and do a little more reading about the news stories http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2006/02/03/103/, they just might notice little things.
It's amazing how stupid most of these people on
Your email has been returned due to insufficent voltage.
Someone managed to record a data burst from the suitsat:
2 006&p=47
http://www.william-jacobs.com/personal/rnr.php?y=
Tracking stuff is not the same as tracking *specific* stuff amongst a cloud of other stuff, again, like a specific person. I don't think the generalized "we've been tacking..." comment is relavent here. I know we have been able to do this. I also know people don't follow mathematically definable orbits (except perhaps when being observed by a Philosopher or an Economics wonk.)
It all might be correct, of course. That would make suitsat a ridiculous bit of grandstanding by an overly bureaucratic federal agency watching itself lose mindshare in a population conditioned to think it's going to be blown up by terrorists at any moment. What's the point of dreaming about the stars then? Hmmm?
Where could we go with half a trillion dollars? Hmmm? That's what we'll be taxed so my alleged President can clean up the shit on the carpet left by his daddy and Uncle Ronny (As well as by those responsible for the Post-WWI arbitrary slicing up of the Mid-East with no regard for its history or its people who, by the way, have all suffered enough for my right to gas up for a buck a gallon.) And none of that conspriracy bullshit. It isn't a conspiracy; but it *is* all connected. As is obvious to anyone who really has dreamt about the stars.
Well, I managed to take that one pretty far afield, huh? As long as you're so quick with the links today perhaps you could post a few to visual light images of some of that stuff the Air Force is so proud about being able to track. Something smaller than a disintegrating Space Shuttle, please. I'd really like to see some. Really. For all the bragging they do about it I don't think they've ever really proved it to Jack and Jill Taxpayer.
There is no such thing as a spherically symetric omni antenna. I wonder if the suit has found a stable attitude which points a bad lobe straight down. Other lobes are attenuated by the atmosphere or don't point at the Earth.
Properly designed LEO satellites take into account plasma flow at orbital altitude.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
NASA's Mission Control Centre in Houston, Texas, says the transmitter ceased operating very quickly after its deployment.
Darn, just like my home wi-fi network. Well I'm glad to hear NASA has trouble with these things too, makes me feel a little less inept...
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
I had my scanner programmed up (Uniden Bearcat 780XLT), I have a nice Dipole Antenna (Diamond D-130J), and a cron job setup to record whatever it heard according to Heavens Above. I'm tapped directly into the descriminator output (ie bypassing the crap audio processing)
I got nothing.
Thinking that I might be a little deaf, I ran the audio file through baudline to see if there was anything.
Nada. Just the normal sound card artifacts i get when recording static.
Now, I know I can hear something on this rig, and I know that I understand the graphs on Heavens Above as I was able to use the same setup to predict and capture some weak telemetry from the ISS a couple of days ago.
This was quite disappointing.
Next pass is coming up this afternoon - fingers crossed.
I'd say it's just peeved at being thrown out of an airlock. You'd be just as upset, believe me.
I've been thinking about getting into amateur radio. A few problems, though - and I thought I'd solicit some advice.
a) I'm very urban-bound -- Vancouver, BC -- but a few blocks from the beach.
b) very space limited.
What are my options? I understand I can use handheld radios, but what can I really accomplish with a unit that small? Are portable antennas a real option?
can you hear me now? Good.
The following update was posted to the AMSAT Bulletin Board and now appears on the AMSAT HomePage.
SuitSat Status 4 Feb 2005
---For Immediate Release---
Silver Spring, Maryland
4 February 2006 at 22:00 UTC
Paraphrasing Mark Twain....the demise of SuitSat-1 is high exaggerated!!
It is now nearly 24 hours since the successful deployment of the SuitSat-1
experiment. These past 24 hours have been a wild ride of
emotions...tremendous highs...deep lows when people reported no signals and
said SuitSat-1 was dead and now....some optimism.
It is absolutely clear that SuitSat-1 is alive. It was successfully turned
on by the ISS crew prior to deploy and the timing, micro-controller
functions and audio appear to be operating nominally. The prime issue
appears to be an extremely weak signal.
I have heard several recordings and have monitored two passes today. When
the signal is above the noise level, you can clearly hear partials of the
student voices, the station ID and the SSTV signal. One of the
complicating factors in reception is the very deep fades that occur due to
the spin of SuitSat.
Based on the information we know thus far, one can narrow down the issue to
the antenna, the feedline, the transmitter output power and/or any of the
connections in between. Through your help, we would like to narrow down
the issue further and also gather some internal telemetry from the
Suit. If the transmitter is running at full power, we would expect the
Suit to end operations in the next few days to a week. If it is not, then
it will operate much longer. Since we do not know how long this experiment
will last, we ask for those with powerful receive stations to listen for
Suitsat---especially during direct overhead passes when the Suit is closest
to your area. If you can record these passes and send the audio to us, it
would be most appreciated. We will continue to be optimistic that this
issue will right itself before the batteries are depleted. So please KEEP
LISTENING!
Based on what we have learned, we would like to provide the following
guidelines to save you time and facilitate gathering information.
1) You need as high a gain antenna as possible with mast mounted
pre-amps. An arrow is the minimal set...it provides very brief snipets of
the communications. HTs and scanners won't cut it.
2) I would not waste your time on passes below 40 degrees
elevation. SuitSat is too far from your station to receive a reliable
signal. We have found that closest approach provides several seconds of
SuitSat communication with 22 element yagis.
3) The "gold" we are looking for right now is the telemetry information
and how long the vehicle stays operational. So if you hear any of the
telemetry, please let us know.
We are also working to get the voice repeater set up on ISS to downlink
SuitSat audio on 437.80 in the event that the ISS Kenwood radio can receive
the SuitSat transmissions. The repeater may be operational as early as
mid-day Sunday. Please do NOT transmit on 145.99, voice or packet, until
we have confirmed that SuitSat is no longer transmitting. These
transmissions interfere with our ability to hear SuitSat.
While the transmission part of the SuitSat experiment has not been stellar,
SuitSat-1 has been tremendously successful in several areas. Some of these
successes include:
-We have captured the imagination of students and the general public
worldwide through this unique experiment
-The media attention to the SuitSat project represents one of the biggest
ever for amateur radio
-We have had well over 2 million internet hits on www.suitsat.org today
-Our student's creative artwork, signatures and voices have been carried in
space and are on-board the spacesuit---the students are now space travelers
as the Suit rotates and orbits the Earth
-Carr
Aren't spacesuits radiation shielded? Would that perhaps affect radio propagation?
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
Just when we reported it had given up the ghost prematurely, we not find that SuitSat is still alive albeit very weak. The SuitSat web site shows weak signal reported from 2006-02-05 05:43:16 on up.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.