Two more days until SuitSat!

Frank Bauer, KA3HDO, who is the ARISS International Chairman and AMSAT's V.P. for Human Spaceflight Programs, reminds us if all goes well, SuitSat will be deployed in 2 days. Are you ready?

SuitSat will be deployed during a Russian EVA scheduled to take place on Friday, February 3 at approximately 22:20 UTC. NASA TV will provide live coverage starting at 21:30 UTC. For digital downlink information and access to NASA TV's Public Channel on the Web in RealPlayer, RealAudio, or Windows Media Player formats, visit http://www.nasa.gov/ntv.

Once the crew is outside on their EVA, they turn all three switches on the control box to the ON position and deploy the spacesuit from ISS. About eight minutes after the crew flips the three switches the Kenwood amateur radio transmitter will power up. About eight minutes after that, the first voicetelemetry message will be transmitted and SuitSat operations begin! This 16 minute delay is a crew safety measure.

Next, Russian Cosmonaut Tokarev will carefully jettison SuitSat-1 by pushing the suit away at about a 30-degree angle upward and about 10 degrees to the left of the back of the station.

Once activated, those who hear SuitSat transmissions on 145.99 MHz are asked to enter their realtime data on the SuitSat website, http://www.suitsat.org/ so that participants around the world can track the satellite.

When first released SuitSat will be in pretty much the same orbit as the International Space Station. This means initially the ISS tracking parameters can also be used to track SuitSat. SuitSat will not have any thrust to maintain its orbit so it will begin to reenter the Earth's atmosphere after a few weeks.

As SuitSat's orbit decays it will "fall" closer to Earth. As the days go by, SuitSat's lower orbit will begin to lead the ISS orbit so you will need to begin listening a few minutes earlier than when the ISS is predicted to come over your location.

You can track the location of the ISS on the AMSAT website at: http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/tools/predict/satloc.php?lang=en&satellite=ISS

You can also get a listing of ISS passes at:
http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/tools/predict/
Just enter your location and select the ISS.

Educational Outreach reports (at schools or informal education sites) as well as Slow Scan TV images can be sent to suitsat@comcast.net. This information will be compiled by the ARISS team.

Frank, KA3HDO

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