If a spacesuit floats in outer space and no one is around, can anyone hear it?
Some genius scientists thought, “Hey, why not take an old Russian space suit, slap a radio transmitter on it, and hurl it into space?” And thus, SuitSat was born. With a rollout plan that looked more like an episode of a comedy series, SuitSat-1 — or Mr. Smith, Ivan Ivanovich, or whatever you wanna call it — was chucked into orbit from the ISS on February 3, 2006.
This DIY satellite was supposed to beam down telemtry data and voice messages for everyone to hear.
But after just two orbits, it decided to ghost us all because its battery gave up. Despite some debate about weak signals, by February 18, it was totally off-grid. Fast forward to September 7, 2006, and SuitSat decided it was time to spectacularly burn up over the Southern Ocean. Turns out, a satellite made from old space duds isn’t exactly ironclad.
