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posted by janrinok on Sunday April 26 2020, @08:04AM   Printer-friendly
from the put-it-back-where-you-found-it dept.

Long-Lost U.S. Military Satellite Found By Amateur Radio Operator:

There are more than 2,000 active satellites orbiting Earth. At the end of their useful lives, many will simply burn up as they reenter the atmosphere. But some will continue circling as "zombie" satellites — neither alive nor quite dead.

"Most zombie satellites are satellites that are no longer under human control, or have failed to some degree," says Scott Tilley.

Tilley, an amateur radio operator living in Canada, has a passion for hunting them down.

In 2018, he found a signal from a NASA probe called IMAGE that the space agency had lost track of in 2005. With Tilley's help, NASA was able to reestablish contact. But he has tracked down zombies even older than IMAGE.

"The oldest one I've seen is Transit 5B-5. And it launched in 1965," he says, referring to a nuclear-powered U.S. Navy navigation satellite that still circles the Earth in a polar orbit, long forgotten by all but a few amateurs interested in hearing it "sing" as it passes overhead.


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  • (Score: 1, Offtopic) by Bot on Sunday April 26 2020, @01:34PM

    by Bot (3902) on Sunday April 26 2020, @01:34PM (#987277) Journal

    >Do I need to inject some Clorox beforehand?

    You shouldn't perform any self medication unless it's costly just patented stuff coming from big pharma.

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