On February 3, 2006, astronauts aboard the International Space Station did something that sounds like it came straight out of a science fiction movie. In a routine spacewalk, commander Bill McArthur and flight engineer Valery Tokarev released an old and empty spacesuit into space. NASA's own account says the suit was an old Russian Orlan model that the crew no longer needed, stuffed mostly with old clothes to give it a human shape before being sent into orbit on its own.
Tokarev reportedly said, "Do svidaniya... Goodbye, Mr. Smith," as he released the suit, according to a contemporaneous NBC News report, and the nickname stuck with the whole team. Anyone watching the live feed that day would have seen an eerie sight: a human-shaped suit drifting away from the station. But the whimsical name masked a serious technical goal, not just a bizarre photo opportunity.
What the floating spacesuit was built to do
The helmet held a tiny radio transmitter and battery pack, turning the suit into a makeshift satellite called SuitSat-1. There is another name for the same program in Russia. According to the phys.org article about the launch, the project is also known as RadioSkaf or Radio Sputnik and was sponsored by Amateur Radio on the International Space Station, an international team of ham radio enthusiasts collaborating with the astronauts on their communication experiments.
