tsty
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The message (which is not "heeeeeellllllppp!") .....
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Feb 6 19:20 UTC 2006 |
Gimmick in the Heavens: An Orbiting Spacesuit
With Transmitter
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
Published: January 28, 2006
In what might resemble a horrifying moment in a science fiction
film, astronauts aboard the International Space Station will
toss an empty spacesuit overboard next week.
The Russian suit will carry three batteries and a ham radio
transmitter and antenna. Amateur radio operators on Earth will
be able to listen to its transmissions over several days until
the batteries fail.
The space station has long had a bond with earthbound amateur radio
operators, and there is a ham rig on the station to communicate with
them. The idea of turning a suit into a satellite came from the
Russians, NASA officials said.
In a few weeks, the orbit of the suit (designated SuitSat-1) will decay,
and the suit will burn up as it falls into the atmosphere. Kwatsi
Alibaruho, a NASA flight director who spoke yesterday at a news
conference in Houston, said, "No part of the suit is expected to
survive re-entry."
The suit will be released during a spacewalk on Feb. 3 in which the
astronauts, William S. McArthur Jr. of the United States and Col. Valery
I. Tokarev of the Russian Air Force, will also repair a moving platform
that carries the station's robot arm.
In December, a safety device designed to cut snagged cables cut one of
two control lines to the platform; NASA is studying why the accident
occurred. The spacewalkers will install a bolt that will keep the second
line from being cut until a more complete repair can be carried out.
"It's very important that we repair this," said Kirk Shireman, the deputy
space station program manager.
Anyone with a ham radio or police scanner that picks up the FM frequency
145.990 MHz can listen to the spacesuit's transmissions. NASA has put a
computer program online at
http://science.nasa.gov/RealTime/JPass/25/JPass.asp
to help people figure out when the suit will be traveling overhead.
The suit will be unpressurized, but the astronauts have stuffed it full
of discarded clothing so that it should retain a somewhat human shape.
Sensors will monitor the suit's temperature and battery power, which
will be transmitted along with a message in five languages.
The message (which is not "heeeeeellllllppp!") will include an image and
secret words for student listeners to decipher.
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rcurl
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response 1 of 8:
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Feb 6 19:27 UTC 2006 |
Why should the suit reenter much sooner than the space station itself?
Granted, it has a much higher frontal area to mass ratio than the space
station, so is more affect by (rarified) atmospheric drag, but I would not
have thought it would reenter in just a few weeks. If this were true, the
space station could get rid of metabolic waste by just dumping it overboard
and it will soon burn up in the atmosphere - or do they do this now?
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