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Amateur Finds Lost NASA Satellite

posted by Fnord666 on Thursday February 01 2018, @04:10AM   Printer-friendly
from the its-not-aliens dept.

In a followup submission to a previous story, Thexalon writes:

Amateur satellite enthusiast Scott Tilley was searching the sky for spy satellites to track when he discovered an unknown object. That object identified itself as the NASA IMAGE satellite, thought to have become non-operational in 2005. NASA has since confirmed that the satellite is indeed IMAGE, and is now planning on using it to observe the magnetosphere near the northern magnetic pole.

Another enthusiast, Cees Bassa, added his own detailed analysis of the error and how it recovered.

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 01 2018, @05:03AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 01 2018, @05:03AM (#631350)

    Should it be a surprise that is hasn't re-entered the atmosphere and burned up after so many years of neglect?

  • (Score: 2) by NCommander on Thursday February 01 2018, @07:58AM

    by NCommander (2) Subscriber Badge <michael@casadevall.pro> on Thursday February 01 2018, @07:58AM (#631369) Homepage Journal

    Only objects in an Low Earth Orbit will come down on their own within a reasonable time. Skylab, which was in a very low orbit (434x441) took about five years on it's own to come down from it's last visit, and I'm not sure how much the Apollo SMs boosted it on each visit. Anything high orbits or geostationary can stay up there for hundreds of years. It's why the FAA requires any craft heading to geostationary orbit reserve fuel to move to a graveyard orbit at it's planned end of service life.

    IMAGE is considerably father out, and I'm not sure it experiences any appreciable atmospheric drag that it will come down within our lifetimes unaided.

    --
    Still always moving

  • (Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Thursday February 01 2018, @03:57PM

    by nitehawk214 (1304) on Thursday February 01 2018, @03:57PM (#631509)

    Satellites don't fall back to earth when they are not given any orders like the do in video games. Once you are out of the atmosphere, there is nothing stopping you.

    The 2nd thing the US ever put in to orbit is still up there: Vanguard 1 [heavens-above.com]. It has at least a couple of hundred years to go.

    IMAGE [heavens-above.com] is in a even higher orbit. IMAGE is several hundred times more massive (500kg vs 1.5kg) so that affects it, but its still probably has got centuries of orbit time left.

    --
    "Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh