[MilCom] NASA's report on SuitSat failure

[AllanStern at aol.com]

Here is an excerpt from the latest NASA report on the ISS; it  describes the 
failure of the SuitSat.
======================
Report #5=20
11:30 p.m. CST, Friday, Feb. 3, 2006
Mission Control  Center, Houston
 
Space station crew members released a spacesuit-turned-satellite during the  
second spacewalk of their mission last night. Called SuitSat, it faintly  
transmitted recorded voices of schoolchildren to amateur radio operators  
worldwide for a brief period before it ceased sending signals.
 
Expedition 12 Commander Bill McArthur and Flight Engineer Valery Tokarev  
ventured outside for a five-hour, 43-minute spacewalk to release SuitSat,  
conduct preventative maintenance to a cable-cutting device, retrieve experiments  
and photograph the station's exterior. Clad in Russian Orlan spacesuits,  
McArthur and Tokarev opened the hatch to begin the spacewalk at 5:44 p.m. EST.  It 
was the fourth career spacewalk for McArthur and the second for  Tokarev.
 
After setting up tools and equipment, they positioned the unneeded Orlan  
spacesuit on a ladder by the station's Pirs airlock hatch. The suit reached the  
end of its operational life for spacewalks in August 2004. It was outfitted by 
 the crew with three batteries, internal sensors and a radio transmitter for 
this  experiment.
 
The SuitSat provided recorded greetings in six languages to ham radio  
operators for about two orbits of the Earth before it stopped transmitting,  perhaps 
due to its batteries failing in the cold environment of space, according  to 
amateur radio coordinators affiliated with the station program. The suit will  
enter the atmosphere and burn up in a few weeks. Tokarev pushed the suit away 
 toward the aft end of the station as the complex flew 225 miles above the 
south  central Pacific Ocean. The suit initially drifted away at a rate of about 
a half  meter per second, slowly floating out of view below the Zvezda 
Service Module  and its attached Progress cargo craft. The suit is now separating 
from the  station at a rate of about six kilometers every 90 minutes. . . 

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