SuitSat Mission Ends, Russia Says

A solitary, unmanned spacesuit floats away from the International Space Station (ISS) during a Feb. 3, 2006 spacewalk. It is destined to burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere. CREDIT: NASA/JSC.

KOROLYOV (Interfax-AVN) - The SuitSat-1 experiment, called RadioSkaf, or Radio Sputnik, in Russian, has been successfully completed by the International Space Station (ISS) crew, project deputy director Sergei Samburov told Interfax-AVN on Sunday.

"The last transmission from the RadioSkaf artificial satellite was received on February 18. The spacesuit, outfitted with a radio transmitter, broadcast nearly 3,500 messages to the Earth over two weeks," Samburov said.

On February 3, Russian cosmonaut Valery Tokarev and U.S. astronaut Bill McArthur jettisoned an old Russian Orlan M spacesuit, empty except for electronic equipment that attracted the attention of students and other people around the world.

The radio transmitter broadcast recorded radio messages. The transmission was on 145.900 MHz FM, in the VHF or two-meter part of the amateur radio band. Voice transmissions included suit data, mission time, suit temperature and battery voltage.

SuitSat-1 was sponsored by Amateur Radio on the International Space Station, an international working group made up of volunteers from national amateur radio societies.

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