Sea Launch is lifting the 9,553 lb EchoStar X satellite into a high perigee geosynchronous transfer orbit today– and you can watch the launch live online.
3:35 pm PST marks the opening of the 49-minute launch window. Check out Sea Launch’s live webcam at any time.
Yesterday we wrote about SuitSat, the old Russian space suit stuffed with radio and electronics gear that was slated to be kicked out of the International Space Station. For a few days, SuitSat would serve as a satellite for amateur radio enthusiasts, before its batteries ran out and the pull of gravity brought it back into the mesophere, for prompt incineration as it fell back to earth.
The “launch” of SuitSat yesterday made big news; MSNBC has a video of astronauts giving the suit the boot here.
But is that suit still in fashion? Australian ABC reports that SuitSat has gone off air:
Plans to use an old Russian spacesuit launched from the International Space Station as a make-shift radio satellite have been short-lived.
American astronaut William MacArthur and Russian cosmonaut Valery Tokarev released the make-shift satellite, dubbed SuitSat, at the start of a six-hour spacewalk.
But before they were back inside, SuitSat’s mission was over.
NASA’s Mission Control Centre in Houston, Texas, says the transmitter ceased operating very quickly after its deployment.
An international team of ham radio enthusiasts who organised the educational project and built the hardware had expected SuitSat to last at least a few days.
The SuitSat website currently has a more optimistic– if guarded– report:
Current thinking is SuitSat is transmitting, but far weaker than expected. Several reliable reports of short snatches of the voice and SSTV signals have been reported. It is recommended that you continue to listen during passes over your area. Please report any positive contact only.
To find a map of SuitSat’s orbit, click here.
Call it orbital recycling:
Thanks to an innovative Russian recycling program, amateur radio fans expect to be hearing from a new recruit in orbit when an old spacesuit gets a new life as a satellite this week.
Beginning on Friday, SuitSat should be on the air, broadcasting on FM 145.990 MHz.
Rather than being launched, this satellite will just get tossed into orbit by the International Space Station crew during a spacewalk slated to begin on Friday evening…..
The old suit was destined for the trash bin until it came to the notice of an international team of amateur radio buffs, said Orlando, Florida, resident Lou McFadin of the Radio Amateur Satellite Corp., or AMSAT.
A Russian colleague attending an AMSAT meeting in 2004 came up with the idea of putting a radio inside a soon-to-be decommissioned spacesuit and having astronauts boot it out the hatch. The all-volunteer effort, aided by corporate donations of equipment and by Moscow, is largely educational.
Space station flight engineer Valery Tokarev will do the honors, with assistance from U.S. astronaut and current space station commander Bill McArthur….
The suit is expected to drift away from the station and begin its short life as a radio satellite.
It will not take calls, but only relay prerecorded messages and transmit an as-yet mysterious digital picture. Batteries will power SuitSat’s radio and electronic gear for up to 90 hours, McFadin said.
Eventually, the suit will be pulled into Earth’s atmosphere and be incinerated.
Satsuit! Now that’s pretty cool.
I myself have got a couple of suits that should be incinerated. They transmit a not-so-secret message of tackiness.
Here’s a cool version of rocket science, as reported by CNN. Call it rocket science on the cheap:
For rocket designer Tim Pickens, a rocket on two wheels is the next best thing to a spaceship.
“At heart we’re a bunch of guys wanting to go to space, and we can’t afford it,” says Pickens of himself and his rocket-scientist brethren, most of whom never get to ride their own creations. “Basically it’s my own subscale space program.”
Pickens, president of rocket-design firm Orion Propulsion, created his first rocket bike with fellow speed enthusiast Glenn May by bolting a 35-pound-thrust rocket engine to Pickens’s bike — enough power for a gentle push down the road.
That project didn’t kill anyone, so Pickens got himself another bike and stepped it up, attaching a 200-pound-thrust engine capable of blasting him from 0 to 60 miles an hour in five seconds — fast enough to beat a Porsche in a drag race.
The rocket bike employs the same hybrid rocket technology as the suborbital rocket plane SpaceShipOne, whose propulsion system Pickens helped design.
Man, we would have done anything to have that bike when we were twelve.