Amateur Astronomer Finds NASA’s Missing Satellite
- 6 years ago
An amateur astronomer has found NASA’s missing satellite.
An amateur astronomer has found NASA's missing satellite, reports NPR. Called the Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE), the spacecraft was launched in the spring of 2000 and tasked with determining how the Earth's magnetosphere is affected by solar wind. It performed that job so well, that after it's 2-year mission was up, NASA extended the endeavor. Unfortunately, its signal was lost in 2005, and IMAGE was declared lost in space, according to Smithsonian Magazine. That status changed when Scott Tilley, who dabbles in radio astronomy, picked up a strange signal while he was searching the sky for the classified and recently vanished Zuma satellite. Tilley did some research and determined that the readings he was picking up were likely being sent by IMAGE. NASA has since confirmed that IMAGE is exactly what Tilley detected. Since the January 21 announcement of the discovery, a number of members of the IMAGE team have expressed hope that the satellite can be saved. A team with Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory intends to try and will be using deep space radio antennas in its attempts to make contact with the craft.
An amateur astronomer has found NASA's missing satellite, reports NPR. Called the Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE), the spacecraft was launched in the spring of 2000 and tasked with determining how the Earth's magnetosphere is affected by solar wind. It performed that job so well, that after it's 2-year mission was up, NASA extended the endeavor. Unfortunately, its signal was lost in 2005, and IMAGE was declared lost in space, according to Smithsonian Magazine. That status changed when Scott Tilley, who dabbles in radio astronomy, picked up a strange signal while he was searching the sky for the classified and recently vanished Zuma satellite. Tilley did some research and determined that the readings he was picking up were likely being sent by IMAGE. NASA has since confirmed that IMAGE is exactly what Tilley detected. Since the January 21 announcement of the discovery, a number of members of the IMAGE team have expressed hope that the satellite can be saved. A team with Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory intends to try and will be using deep space radio antennas in its attempts to make contact with the craft.