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

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.


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by NCommander on Thursday February 01 2018, @07:51AM

    by NCommander (2) Subscriber Badge <michael@casadevall.pro> on Thursday February 01 2018, @07:51AM (#631368) Homepage Journal

    It's actually been known to happen that satellites will sometimes spontaneously resurrect. The poster child of this is probably ham radio's AMSAT-7, launched 1974, died 1981, officially confirmed alive in 2002 and still going as of today, but it was apparently semi-functional throughout the late 80s/mid 90s, as it was used in resistance against Polish anti-communists.

    The damn thing is so old the FCC actually had to issue a wavier to allow hams to talk to it as its Mode B transponder actually operates on frequencies disallowed these days.

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