 RS-18 satellite |
The USSR's space station Salyut-7 had been launched to Earth orbit earlier that year with the tiny Iskra satellite bundled up inside. As cosmonauts Anatoli Berezovoi and Valentin Lebedev opened up the new station, they unwrapped Iskra-2 and pushed it out an airlock at an altitude of 210 miles.
Moscow TV showed live coverage of the hand launch allowing aviation institute students on the ground to see their satellite go into its own orbit.
Because it started life in a low orbit, the satellite was able to remain in space only about seven weeks before falling into the atmosphere and burning.
Another one. Six months later, on November 18, 1982, Berezovoi and Lebedev hand launched another small satellite, Iskra-3, from the space station airlock at an altitude of 220 miles.
It remained in space four weeks before descending into the atmosphere and burning.
Of course, each hand launched satellite is rocketed to space inside a space shuttle, space station or space freighter, and then released by human hand into its own orbit.
First American. The first hand launch of an American satellite came in November 1985 when astronaut Sherwood Spring pushed the Advanced Autopilot Radar target satellite from the cargo bay of space shuttle Atlantis during flight STS-61B. That satellite orbited Earth for more than a year.
More hand launches. One of two miniature Sputnik replicas built by students in the Aero Club de France, AMSAT-France, the Astronautical Federation of Russia, and AMSAT-Russia, was RS-17a. It was hand launched from the Mir space station on November 4, 1997, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the launching of the first artificial Earth satellite, Sputnik 1, on October 4, 1957. The tiny satellite transmitted until December 29, 1997.
Another small satellite. RS-18 was a one-third scale replica of Sputnik 1. It was ferried up to Mir by a Progress cargo freighter and hand launched from the space station on November 10, 1998, at an altitude of approximately 200 miles. According to the Associated Press, cosmonaut Gennady Padalka told his fellow space walker Sergei Avdeyev to "toss it gently toward the Moon."
Yet another small satellite. Another tossed overboard from Mir was RS-19 launched by French astronaut Jean-Pierre Haigneré during a spacewalk on April 16, 1999.
The satellite, to be known as Beatnik, was designed to transmit the so-called "Internet beat time," a concept being promoted then by the Swatch Group watch manufacturing company of Switzerland.
The Russian Space Agency (RSA) announced the satellite would be used to measure the behavior of small objects in the presence of the larger space station.
The satellite was built to transmit pre-recorded voice in multiple languages and text messages. Before launch, 400 messages referencing Swatch's "beat" theme and the company's concept of a single "Internet time" that had been collected via the Web were loaded onto the satellite's memory. Up to 10 seven-second messages were to be transmitted at a time, followed by a seven-second pause.
Swatch Group said Project Beatnik an effort to "improve time coordination in a separate and new way between all parts on Earth."
The day before the scheduled hand launch from Mir, Swatch cancelled the project because of international opposition to the operation. The satellite was launched by hand from the Mir spave station, but its transmitter had been turned off beforehand.
Suitsat. What do you do with a worn-out spacesuit if you're a couple of hundred miles above Earth aboard the International Space Station? If you were the Expedition 12 crew, you would stuff it with some science instruments and a radio transmitter, and toss the old suit overboard.
It would float around the outside of the station for a while then gradually descend into the thicker atmosphere below where it would burn up. Along the way, students on the ground around the world would learn a lot about space and science.
Is this science fiction? No, Satsuit was real and was launched by hand from the orbiting International Space Station on February 3, 2006. The free-floating space suit became an unmanned satellite transmitting pre-recorded voices.
THE STORY OF SUITSAT, AN EMPTY SPACESUIT BROADCASTING TO EARTH »
The future. More small satellites are planned for hand launch in the future.
For instance, the Human Activated Nanosatellite Demonstration (HAND) from Bristol University in Great Britain is a stick-like satellite to be launched by space shuttle astronauts who would toss it overboard during a spacewalk.
The four-ft.-long HAND would weigh 14 lbs. and have batteries, sensors and a radio transmitter. To launch HAND, an astronaut would unfold it, which would would turn on its electrical power. Then the astronaut would point it away, start the propulsion system, and let it go rocketing off into space.
HAND would fly away collecting data and sending it by radio to receiving stations on the ground. The data and telemetry would be decoded by amateur radio operators using their personal computers.
Learn more:
- Movie of Mini-Sputnik hand launch (1.2 Mb)
- Sound of Mini-Sputnik from space
- Iskar-2
- Iskar-3
- Russian Sparks in Space
- Little Echo of the Beep Heard Around the World
- The Many Little Beeps Heard 'Round the World
- Mini-Sputnik 40
- Suitsat STO
- Suitsat reception reports suitsat.org
- Suitsat preparation pictures suitsat.org
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