NASA confirms lost satellite discovery by amateur astronomer

There is news published on 17 February 2018 on tecmundo. They said about this information. Late last month, news surfaced that amateur astronomer Scott Tilly had spotted a NASA satellite that had long since disappeared while searching for traces of ZUMA, an American spy satellite launched by SpaceX that the Pentagon said was not got into orbit and disappeared into the sky after its launch in January. Now, NASA has officially confirmed that the signal detected by the Canadian astronomer is actually from the IMAGE (Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration) satellite, which has disappeared since 2005.

Whenever you think of Jupiter, the largest and most impressive planet in our Solar System, the first image that comes to mind is certainly the one that shows "Great Red Spot", a permanent storm that may seem like an eye. But this is not the only awesome visual on the planet. As Internet surfer Gerald Eichstädt has shown, Jupiter's poles are even more incredible.

This image you give portrays the south pole of Jupiter and was made by NASA's Juno spacecraft. The file, which was in the public archive of the mission, was processed by Eichstädt and then published by the site of the US space agency.

The space agency's engineers then activated the Deep Space Network - a network of terrestrial radio telescopes used to communicate with space missions - to identify the satellite signal, which would then be confirmed by its five separate antennas, putting it back control.

IMAGE was launched in March 2000 and exceeded its planned two-year mission, which runs through the end of 2005. The original was originally designed to study Earth's magnetosphere, resulting in 37 scientific discoveries based on its report Last. In 2007, during an eclipse, a new attempt to reestablish communication was made, but possibly their batteries could not handle, which made NASA end its mission.

In a statement, NASA revealed that the satellite's return to "life" is even more mysterious than one might imagine. When IMAGE lost contact, it was using its backup hardware after the primary set was disabled. And after its return, the satellite was again using its main hardware.

For the next step, the space agency is creating a small control center that will command the satellite and assess the state of the scientific instruments. If any of the instruments are working, NASA will convene a group of scientists to find out if the data can be used to make some low-budget scientific discovery.

"Scientists and engineers at NASA's Goddard Space Center in Maryland will continue to try to analyze spacecraft data to learn more about their state," the space agency said. "This process will take a week or two to complete because it takes some time to adapt the old software and the information database to more modern systems."

For those interested in the saga, NASA has created a web page where it is posting updates on its attempts to revive the satellite.