SuitSat Falls Silent
Friday, the astronauts aboard the International Space Station “launched” a satellite made from an old spacesuit outfitted with sensors and a radio transmitter. This “SuitSat” was to be a proof-of-concept for recycling used spacesuits into useful satellites. Transmitting on a frequency of 145.990 MHz, SuitSat was to broadcast a pre-recorded greeting followed by telemetry information to anyone listening on a ham radio or police scanner over the course of a couple of days. Unfortunately, transmissions have reportedly been very faint and, for a little while, it was even thought to have failed completely.
I was hoping to get a chance to listen to it myself, but so far I have only picked up static. Hopefully some useful information can be gleaned from this experiments and there will be more like it in the future.
