You’ll have to make him more of an engineer. Not just a broadcast engineer, but a jack of all trades.
He’ll need to jury-rig some mechanisms on his orbital platform, just to survive long enough to be a witness the way you’re describing.
I’d also suggest making the call to his destination more promising, even if it turns out not to be quite accurate.
good idea
System scavenging.
Pull from unused monitors and computers to keep life support functioning.
MIR is a good example of what and how they did that.