News NASA’s Long Dead ‘IMAGE’ Satellite is Alive!

[GLS]

NASA’s Long Dead ‘IMAGE’ Satellite is Alive!

Over the past week the station has been dedicated to an S-band scan looking for new targets and refreshing the frequency list, triggered by the recent launch of the mysterious ZUMA mission. This tends to be a semi-annual activity as it can eat up a lot of observing resources even with much of the data gathering automated the data reviewing is tedious.

Upon reviewing the data from January 20, 2018, I noticed a curve consistent with an satellite in High Earth Orbit (HEO) on 2275.905MHz, darn not ZUMA… This is not uncommon during these searches. So I set to work to identify the source.

A quick identity scan using ‘strf’ (sat tools rf) revealed the signal to come from 2000-017A, 26113, called IMAGE.

https://skyriddles.wordpress.com/2018/01/21/nasas-long-dead-image-satellite-is-alive/

 

[MaverickSawyer]

Cool! Glad to see at least SOME stuff is still built to last. :lol:

 

[Lucy]

Both of these subjects are extremely interesting to me - can IMAGE still do useful science, and can ZUMA be located on orbit? You can't hide forever in space!

 

[Andy44]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMAGE

https://image.gsfc.nasa.gov/

Doubtful, but make up your own mind from the links. It seems to me that the controllers tried everything they could before giving up on the mission.

 

[Urwumpe]

NASA is trying to recover it:

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/attempting-to-contact-nasa-s-image

To achieve the possible, you have to attempt the impossible, right?

 

[boogabooga]

The types of hardware and operating systems used in the IMAGE Mission Operations Center no longer exist

It was launched in 2000!

This makes me feel really old.

 

[Urwumpe]

IMAGE is confirmed by NASA, they retrieved basic housekeeping data by telemetry, which suggests that at least the control system of the satellite is intact.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/nasa-image-confirmed

 

[Lucy]

This process must take into consideration the vintage nature of the spacecraft

It's only 18! Just about old enough to vote!

 

[Urwumpe]

Well, its pretty vintage, at least by the hardware:

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19990004346.pdf

Also interesting in this context: The Power Subsystem was controlled by software.

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19990007766.pdf

 

[GLS]

It's only 18! Just about old enough to vote!

18 plus the development and assembly time....

 

[Graham2001]

Latest news, looks like whatever happened, the primary power system is back online.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/nasa-image-confirmed

 

[Urwumpe]

Latest news, looks like whatever happened, the primary power system is back online.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/nasa-image-confirmed

Spacecraft can be really mysterious sometimes. :thumbup:

 

[Notebook]

The "good" aliens fixed it for us.

N.

 

[Matias Saibene]

Impressive, it is seen that NASA does not know of programmed obsolescence.


I imagine the activation of the satellite systems something like the reactivation of the Aperture facilities in the game Portal 2. With an echoed voice saying "Powerup initiated".

The types of hardware and operating systems used in the IMAGE Mission Operations Center no longer exist

It was launched in 2000!

We just need a bit of Franklin Gothic typography (like in Office 2000).

 

[Urwumpe]

Current information from the IMAGE spacecraft shows that the battery is fully charged, and that overall, the satellite itself seems to be in good shape.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/nasa-image-confirmed

 

[statickid]

:blink:

Edit:
It's a system-failure failure :lol: