SuitSat
  Russian Orlan Suit

All up to date SuitSat clips you can find on the website of A.J. Farmer AJ3U - Hollywood,
MD, USA
SuitSat Audio http://www.aj3u.com/blog/
SuitSat Video http://www.aj3u.com/suitsat/video.php
SuiSat Status http://www.aj3u.com/suitsat/status.php

"This is SuitSat-1 RS0RS"

These words will echo from space in the near future, inspiring students, exciting ham radio operators and touching the world.
 
If all goes as planned, a unique Extra-Vehicular Activity (EVA)—or Spacewalk will be conducted on the International Space Station (ISS) in early February 2006. During this spacewalk, the ISS crew will push a Russian spacesuit overboard---with no humans in it, of course! But this Spacesuit holds the hopes, dreams and creativity of students around the world. And for a week or two, this Suit-robot-satellite will take on a life of its own---parroting students voices from around the world, voicing down suit health telemetry and sending a special commemorative picture to all who want to receive it.
Suitsat-1 (also called Radioskaf or Radio Sputnik in Russian) mission activities will be conducted on the amateur radio (ham radio) frequencies, a bit above the FM broadcast band. The voice signals can be picked up with ham radio receivers and FM VHF (Very High Frequency) scanners—like police-band scanners.

Students, scouts, teachers, ham radio operators, and the general public are encouraged to track the space suit, hear the conversations from space, copy the suit telemetry and capture the picture. A special certificate will be distributed to those who receive the voice signals and those who capture the picture. We also will have a special award for those students who receive the “special words” that are embedded in the messages from our SuitSat student “crew members.” These special words are in different languages---English, French, German, Spanish, Russian, and Japanese. So you are encouraged to record the SuitSat downlink audio and get help from fellow students who know these languages.

Also included in this spacesuit is a computer Compact Disk (CD) with images of over 300 items collected from schools and educational organizations around the world. These include creative works of art from students as well as student signatures, school or scout logos, and class or group pictures. Students, schools and educational organizations that participated in the development of this disk earlier this year will all be part of the SuitSat spacewalk---as their creative works, signatures and pictures all float in space!

Special Word
Several of the student messages include a special word. One student project for SuitSat will be to copy all the special words (in different languages) and submit them to the ARISS team for special educational award recognition.

Suit Telemetry
The suit telemetry is sensed by the SuitSat microcontroller and converted to a voice message. Three telemetry data messages will be transmitted. These will be periodically repeated. Specifically, the suit telemetry will be transmitted in the following order:


Mission Time
Suit Temperature
Battery Voltage, where 28 Volts is the nominal voltage
The SuitSat team is quite interested all three pieces of telemetry as it will be a predictor for SuitSat mission life.

SuitSat Downlink Picture
The downlink picture will be transmitted using a set of audio tones, similar to a computer modem, using a ham radio picture standard called Slow-Scan Television (SSTV). SSTV, developed many years ago, provides Cell Phone quality pictures. A single picture was installed on in the SuitSat microprocessor memory and will be downlinked. SuitSat uses an SSTV data transmission standard called Robot 36. This standard sends the entire image in 36 seconds.

 

SSTV Image from VE6BLD, Canada
The alarm wasn't set for first pass but I awoke 3 minutes before 5:51 pass!!Luckily everything was still on as I heard suitSat very good this time for another 22 second clip.(MP3)

No telemetry this pass! Elevation was 85 degrees. I have a pretty good partial SSTV picture from a previous pass to send later. Hopefully I will receive more telemetry on next two passes!!73 from Bob VE6BLD DO32

SSTV Picture by WD9GWG, Wisconsin, USA E6BLD, Canada
SSTV Audio (MP3)
Received by WD9GWG at 0920 CST
Saturday Feb 4
Using 2m boomer right polarized 12 elements