SuitSat-1 was an unusual amateur radio satellite in more than one way. The housing was a discarded ORLAN Space Suit that housed an amateur transmitter broadcasting telemetry and greetings from youngsters in various languages. Furthermore, this satellite was manually launched from the ISS during a spacewalk.
A second hand-launch will follow in 2010, this time of a "real" satellite: ARISSat-1. As part of this, a global call will be launched to schools to participate in this project:
STUDENTS AND TEACHERS INVITED TO FLY A FILE ON ARISSAT-1
3 February 2006, cosmonaut Valery IvanovichTokarev hand launched the Amateur Radio satellite SuitSat-1 from the ISS during an EVA (Extra Vehicular Activity = Spacewalk).
SuitSat-1 was a very special Amateur Radio satellite. A discarded Russian ORLAN Space Suit (in Russian a "Skafander") was equipped with an Amateur Radio transmitter, which transmitted telemetry and greetings from youngsters to the youth of the world in several languages.
In 2010, an Amateur Radio satellite will once more be hand launched from the International Space Station. It will be called ARISSat-1.
ARISSat-1 will again transmit messages recorded by students. Moreover, teachers and students are invited to fly a file aboard this amateur radio satellite.
The ARISSat-1 Team wishes to include on our new satellite a memory stick of files prepared by students. This should be a jpg or pdf of things the student has prepared such as a paper or a study done on a STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) topic, a drawing of space craft or a schematic, a journal kept on a STEM topic, a story or news article about a STEM subject, a photo of the class doing a hands-on STEM activity -- that type of thing.
Having the student's work be a part of ARISSat-1 means the student is a part of the satellite project and along for the spacewalk and deployment of ARISSat-1.
Readers of this Bulletin are invited to approach teachers and students and draw their attention on this opportunity to participate directly to a space flight for the honor of being part of space activities.
Dave Jordan, AA4KN, will take delivery of these files and copy them onto a memory stick, plus make them available on the web for anyone to see. The quantity of files and the size of a file are unlimited since memory sticks provide for a very large amount of file space.
Files should be either .JPG or .PDF -- no Word documents, please. Please send files to Dave Jordan's address.
He will look at all of them for content appropriate to students. Files can be in any language as long as an English translation is also included as a text file.
Info: Gaston ON4WF