CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) - A spacesuit that was tossed
out of the international space station after being stuffed with old clothes and
a radio transmitter was again sending weak signals as it circled the globe, ham
radio operators reported Sunday.
"Death reports were
premature,'' said Allen Pitts, a spokesman for the American Radio Relay League,
a Connecticut-based association for amateur radio operators. He said the
signals were "weak, cold and really hard to copy, but alive.''
The suit, dubbed "Ivan
Ivanovich,'' was released from the space station Friday, looking
like a cosmonaut tumbling helplessly through space.
NASA reported late Friday that the
spacesuit had ceased transmitting.
The suit
is supposed to send recorded messages in six languages to amateur radio
operators for several days before eventually re-entering Earth's atmosphere and
burning up. The spacesuit also is supposed to transmit pictures, artwork and
lessons for schoolchildren on the ground.
Along with the transmitter,
the spacesuit
has internal sensors to monitor temperature and battery power. Radio operators
were supposed to pick up the messages for several days by tuning into FM
frequency 145.990 MHz.
The spacesuit project,
known as SuitSat-1,
was the brainchild of a Russian ham radio operator.
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