Ivan Ivanovich: Mr Smith the spacesuit goes to space

[KeyserXSoze]

Source

Empty spacesuit orbits Earth, transmits, goes silent

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) -- An unmanned spacesuit tossed out of the international space station was supposed to float through space, talking to radio operators around the globe.

The suit, stuffed with old clothes and a radio transmitter, orbited Earth twice on Friday, giving off faint signals to Japan. But then the suit, dubbed "Ivan Ivanovich," was apparently silent.

"No more transmissions are being received by ham radio operators ... It may have ceased operating very shortly after its deployment," said NASA commentator Rob Navias, speculating its batteries became too cold.

The deployment of the spacesuit started a five-and-a-half-hour spacewalk of mixed results by flight engineer Valery Tokarev and U.S. commander Bill McArthur to perform maintenance and photography tasks.

The suit was released from the international space station on Friday afternoon, looking like a cosmonaut tumbling helplessly through space. The Russian suit was equipped with a radio transmitter to send recorded messages in six languages to amateur radio operators for several days before eventually re-entering Earth's atmosphere and burning up, NASA officials said.

It even wore a helmet and gloves.

"Goodbye, Mr. Smith," Tokarev quipped in Russian, giving the spacesuit the generic nickname "Ivan Ivanovich," as he tossed it out of the station.

The spacesuit project, known as SuitSat-1, was the brainchild of a Russian ham radio operator. It was supposed to send several words in code for schoolchildren listening on the ground. Radio operators were supposed to pick up the messages for several days by tuning into FM frequency 145.990 MHz.

Along with the radio transmitter, the stuffed spacesuit also had internal sensors to monitor temperature and battery power. As it floated along, it was to have transmitted its temperature, battery power and time it has been in space to the ground.

During the spacewalk, Tokarev and McArthur covered a wide swath of the 240-foot-wide, 140-foot-long floating station as they took on several chores. It was the fourth spacewalk for McArthur and the second for Tokarev.

The tasks included creating storage space, retrieving a Russian science experiment and photographing handrails, antennas and sensors to see how they have held up in space.

Their most difficult chore involved taking steps to protect an important cable connected to a transporter that moves a platform holding the station's robotic arm.

A twin cable that provides power, data and video to the mobile transporter was inadvertently cut in December. Mission managers wanted to make sure that did not happen to the remaining cable by having McArthur insert a bolt into a cable cutter device.

But McArthur had trouble tightening the bolt, so Tokarev instead tied the cable with a wire to a handrail out of the way of the cable cutter device. The cut cable will be repaired later, but in the meantime the transporter cannot move.

"It's disappointing that it didn't go exactly the way we wanted," McArthur said. "You know, that's just life in the big city."

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[naitaka]

An earlier Ivan Ivanovich had a more successful career:

The Vostok spacecraft had no soft-landing system. After the main parachute had opened and the capsule was descending toward the ground, the cosmonaut had to use an ejection seat to rocket away from the capsule and then land on earth under his own parachute. To test the system a mannequin, dubbed 'Ivan Ivanovich' was flown on two Vostok test flights. On the Korabl-Sputnik 4 flight of 9 March 1961 Ivanovich was ejected from the capsule and successfully recovered by parachute. His companion, the dog, Chernsuhka was successfully recovered with the capsule. Ivan flew again successfully on 25 March 1961 aboard Korabl-Sputnik 5 with the dog Zvezdochka. These test flights cleared the way for Yuri Gagarin's first flight around the earth on 12 April 1961. To prevent any confusion by peasants who might recover Ivan and think he was a dead cosmonaut or an alien, a sign reading 'MAKET' ('dummy' in Russian) was placed under his visor.

http://www.astronautix.com/astros/ivaovich.htm

 

[KeyserXSoze]

Ivan lives!!!! Update

Spacesuit radio 'alive' in orbit

An old spacesuit stuffed with a radio transmitter and old clothes is still emitting a weak signal as it orbits the globe, amateur radio enthusiasts say.
Nasa had reported that the "SuitSat" device had ceased working within hours of its release from the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday.

But a US amateur radio spokesman said weak signals had been picked up. "Death reports were premature," he said.

The suit is meant to transmit messages in six languages to amateur radio fans.

The makeshift satellite was tossed from the ISS by crew members Bill McArthur and Valery Tokarev as they began a six-hour spacewalk.

Made from a decommissioned Russian spacesuit, the SuitSat contains a radio, transmitter and sensors to monitor temperature and battery power, with old clothes packed in to hold the equipment in place.

'Cold but alive'

The idea was for radio operators to be able to pick up recorded messages for several days before the device re-entered the atmosphere and burned up. Images and lessons were also to be sent for schoolchildren.

Reports from Nasa on Friday suggested the device had stopped working before the ISS crew had even completed their spacewalk.

However, members of the Connecticut-based American Radio Relay League (ARRL) report picking up a feeble signal on the 145.99MHz frequency in the days since.

Spokesman Allen Pitts said the signals were "weak, cold and really hard to copy, but alive".

The group says the evidence points to a problem with the antenna fixed to the spacesuit's helmet or the wires linking the electronics.

ARRL has appealed to amateur radio operators around the world to gather extra information by listening out for the signal and passing on their results.

The spacesuit was nicknamed "Ivan Ivanovich", after a lifelike Russian mannequin sent on a test flight shortly before Yuri Gagarin's groundbreaking mission in 1961.