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Satellite Abandoned In 1967 Mysteriously Comes Back Online

posted by cmn32480 on Thursday November 24 2016, @09:22AM   
from the they-don't-make-them-like-that-anymore dept.

fliptop writes:

An American satellite abandoned in 1967 suddenly came back online and began transmitting again for the first time in 50 years:

Amateur astronomers first suspected that they'd found the satellite in 2013, but needed years to confirm that it was still occasionally transmitting. The satellite, dubbed LES1, was built by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and launched into space in 1965.

A mistake in the satellite's circuitry caused it to never leave its circular orbit, and it eventually stop transmitting in 1967. The satellite's signal now fluctuates widely in strength, meaning that it's likely only transmitting when its solar panels are in direct sunlight. Scientists expect that the satellite's onboard batteries have disintegrated.

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Original Submission

• What the satellite was for (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 24 2016, @04:28PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 24 2016, @04:28PM (#432447)

  In case you were wondering, the satellite's purpose [wikipedia.org]:

  Amongst the technologies tested on LES1 through LES4 were solid-state X-band radio equipment, low-power logic circuits, electronic despinning (using optics to determine the location of the Earth and Sun relative to a spinning satellite at any moment, and then transmitting via whichever of several antennae were best positioned with respect to the Earth), and magnetic torquers.[3]

  If you want the nitty-gritty, look at Section 9 in this progress report [archive.org]

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