Four years ago, a Russian cosmonaut--with help from a US astronaut--tossed the so-called mini Sputnik out of the Mir space station's airlock door. The launch of the tiny spacecraft--also variously known as Sputnik 40, PS-2 and RS-17--sparked a lot of interest around the world on the part of amateurs and the SWL community, who tuned in to track its path and attempt to decode its telemetry.

Built by students in Russia and France, the mini Sputnik was launched from Mir November 4, 1997, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the launching of the first artificial Earth satellite, Sputnik 1, on October 4, 1957.

A photo of the mini Sputnik--Sputnik 40.

The small satellite was ferried to the space station in a Russian Progress cargo rocket. Aboard Mir, US astronaut David Wolf, KC5VPF, helped cosmonauts Anatoly Solovyev and Pavel Vinogradov turn on and check out the transmitter. Then Solovyev and Vinogradov went outside to toss it into the void, marking one of the few times a live satellite was launched in this manner (see sidebar, "The First Hand-Launched Hamsats.")

The 1997 mini Sputnik was a working one-third scale model of the original. When it left the space station, it became satellite number 24958 in NASA's catalog. It enjoyed its 15 minutes of fame, but today, against backdrop of microsats, pacsats, UoSATs and other celebrated hamsats, this tiny little package has been all but forgotten.

Where Sputnik 1 was a relatively large 23 inches in diameter and weighed 184 pounds, the mini Sputnik was only about eight inches across and weighed about six pounds. The mini Sputnik sphere transmitted a "beep-beep" beacon on 145.820 MHz. Sputnik 1's beacon had transmitted at around 20 MHz. Does anyone remember that WWV shut down its 20 MHz transmitter during evening overhead passes of Sputnik 1?

The small, RS-17 was powered by three one-pound packs of four lithium batteries, each delivering 3.5 V. The transmitter delivered 250 mW of RF to a circularly polarized, 500 mm antenna. It could be heard both as SSB and FM. While it sounded better on SSB, the Doppler shift made locating the satellite's signal more complex in that mode.

The First Hand-Launched Hamsats Most Soviet and Russian Amateur Radio satellites have been called RadioSputnik (RS), but three in the early 1980s shared a different name, Iskra--"spark" in Russian. Students and radio amateurs at Moscow's Ordzhjonikidze Aviation Institute built the 62-pound satellites. Each was powered by solar cells and had a transponder, telemetry beacon, ground-command radio, codestore message bulletin board, and computer with memory. Their transponders received at 21 MHz and transmitted at 28 MHz. Their telemetry beacons were near 29 MHz. Controlled by ground stations at Moscow and Kaluga, the Iskras were intended for communication among Eastern Bloc hams in Bulgaria, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Laos, Mongolia, Poland, Romania, USSR and Vietnam. Iskra-1 was not launched by hand from a space station, Rather, it was launched in 1981 on a rocket from the Soviet Union's Northern Cosmodrome at Plesetsk. After 13 weeks, it dropped and burned in the atmosphere. The USSR's Salyut-7 space station was launched to Earth orbit in 1982 with the second Iskra bundled up inside. As cosmonauts Anatoli Berezovoi and Valentin Lebedev opened up the new station, they unwrapped Iskra-2 and then pushed it out an airlock on May 17 at an altitude of 210 miles. Moscow TV showed live coverage of that "hand launch" allowing the aviation institute students to see their satellite go into its own orbit. Since it started life in such a low orbit, the satellite was able to remain in space only about seven weeks before falling into the atmosphere and burning. Six months later, on November 18, Berezovoi and Lebedev hand launched Iskra-3 from the airlock at an altitude of 220 miles. Even though Iskra-3 was much like Iskra-2, it suffered from internal overheating and didn't work as well. It remained in space only four weeks before descending into the atmosphere and burning.

Hams on Earth were able to hear the signal using 2-meter hand-held transceivers and scanners. Doppler caused the received signal to appear to range in frequency from 145.827 MHz at acquisition of signal (AOS) to 145.819 MHz at loss of signal (LOS).

The audio pitch of the mini Sputnik's signal varied with the temperature inside the spacecraft, ranging from -58 to +122 degrees F (-50 to +50 C). The mini Sputnik took about 92 minutes to orbit Earth.

It was reported that the first ham to hear RS-17 was Russian operator Sergej Samburov, RV3DR, who was in the Energia club station in Korolev, Russia, monitoring signals from Mir for the crew spacewalk. When Wolf, Solovyev and Vinogradov turned on the RS-17 transmitter, RV3DR copied the strong signal.

The Sputnik 40 (RS-17) 2-meter transmitter module, designed by Gérard Auvray, F6FAO.

When Solovyev and Vinogradov stood up in the hatch, they couldn't release the satellite until the station had rotated 180 degrees on its axis to face them away from the direction of flight. They held onto the mini Sputnik through one orbit, then tossed it. The little satellite drifted away, behind and below Mir.

As the mini Sputnik looped around the globe, reception reports arrived from all over. Early news came from Australia, the US, Great Britain, France, Russia and FR5KJ, the club station at Jules Reydellet College on Reunion Island, where--it was noted--a great cheer went up from the hams, students and teachers gathered to listen to the Sputnik model as it passed overhead on its maiden orbit.

Those French college students had constructed the transmitter used in the satellite while the Russian students at the Polytechnic Laboratory of Nalchik Kabardine had built the satellite body. In fact, two working models had been assembled and transported to Mir, but only one was launched. Technical assistance was provided by AMSAT-France. The project was funded by private donations.

A model of the original Sputnik 1 satellite at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC.

As the mini Sputnik satellite beacon transmitter continued to beep away week after week, the ARRL referred to it as the "orbiting equivalent of the Energizer Bunny." In fact, it functioned longer than the original Sputnik 1 beacon had some 40 years earlier. When the mini Sputnik became a Silent Key and ceased transmitting on December 29, 1997, it had surpassed the radio life of its original namesake by several weeks.

The mini Sputnik's builders had hoped their little satellite would work for 40 days. Instead, its transmitter ran for almost eight weeks, sending down its beep-beep signal for 55 days.

The mini Sputnik launched in 1997 was not the first of its breed. Two other launches followed, and one was to prove somewhat controversial. More on those efforts in later columns.

Editor's note: ARRL Life Member Anthony R. Curtis, K3RXK, lives in Florence, Kentucky. He describes himself as "a dc-to-daylight kind of guy." He's interested in AMSAT, ARES, digital, HF, VHF, UHF, CW, SSB, FM, QRP, contesting and DX. Licensed since 1954, he originally held the call sign W8TIZ. An Extra class op with a PhD in mass communication, Curtis has written 72 books about space, astronomy, computers and electronics. He is editor of Space Today Online. Active as an ARRL field volunteer, Curtis served as Section Emergency Coordinator for the Maryland-DC Section and as net manager for the Maryland Emergency Phone Net. He now serves as an ARRL Educational Advisor and a Great Lakes Division Assistant Director. He also has been president of clubs and repeater associations. Curtis is employed as associate dean for academic information services at the Union Institute University in Cincinnati, Ohio. Readers can contact Tony Curtis via e-mail <k3rxk@arrl.net>.

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