Satellite Lost and Found
By Fenella Saunders
The IMAGE spacecraft ceased communications in 2005 and was presumed dead, but its revived signal was recently identified by an amateur.
This Article From Issue
March-April 2018
Volume 106, Number 2
Page 95
The Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE) satellite, launched in 2000, made visible for the first time the magnetosphere that surrounds Earth and shields it from the solar wind. And for the five years that the satellite operated, it sent back astonishing imagery leading to some 40 new discoveries about Earth’s magnetosphere and plasmasphere. But at the end of 2005, there were no more transmissions. NASA researchers surmised that a space radiation event caused IMAGE’s electronics to shut down.
All images are courtesy of NASA.
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But in early 2018, Scott Tilley, an amateur radio astronomer in Canada, heard a signal in an orbit that matched that for IMAGE. The solar-powered satellite was designed to reset itself if its battery drained too low, and looking back through data records, astronomers think this reset happened when IMAGE was eclipsed from the Sun in Earth’s shadow, sometime between 2014 and 2016. NASA confirmed IMAGE’s identity on January 30, and found that the craft’s battery is fully charged. The agency is recreating outdated software used to control the craft in an attempt to turn its science instruments back on before it decides whether to allocate funds for control of the spacecraft.
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