Back in 2000, NASA launched the Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE) satellite. It was the first satellite dedicated to observing the magnetosphere of the Earth and producing global images of plasma in the inner magnetosphere. One of the major goals of the project was to map how the Earth’s magnetosphere interacted with the solar wind.
Mostly during a magnetic storm (an event like a coronal mass ejection would drive a magnetic storm). The satellite failed unexpectedly roughly five years into its mission.
Now, the satellite appears
to have turned itself back on, as unexpectedly as it turned off. NASA lost
contact with Image in 2005 when it failed to respond to communications. The
organization hoped a 2007 eclipse might reboot the satellite, but when that
didn’t happen, NASA turned off the computers and shut down the mission. Then,
earlier this month, an amateur astronomer picked up a signal from the satellite.
NASA’s current guidance
states: To confirm beyond doubt that the satellite is IMAGE, NASA will next
attempt to capture and analyze data from the signal. The challenge to decoding
the signal is primarily technical. The types of hardware and operating systems
used in the IMAGE Mission Operations Center no longer exist, and other systems
have been updated several versions beyond what they were at the time, requiring
significant reverse-engineering.
If data decoding is
successful, NASA will seek to turn on the science payload — currently turned
off — to understand the status of the various science instruments. Pending the
outcome of these activities, NASA will decide on how to proceed.
The organization’s original
diagnosis of the Image mission failure blamed the “instant trip” of the solid
state power controller, which supplied power to its radio transponder.
It is not known under what
circumstances the breaker would’ve tripped, or what could’ve possibly caused it
to reset in the meantime. It’s also not clear if there’s any value to
reactivating the satellite or what scientific research it could still perform.
Typically satellites this
far outside their original mission parameters are low on fuel. It’s also not
uncommon for satellites to have limited power reserves, either due to the age
of their on-board power supplies, damage to solar panels, or other equipment
degradation. And, of course, it’s possible that Image’s basic equipment is
still functional, but that its more advanced scientific packages may not come
back online.
If Image can be coaxed back
to life, it would be an impressive feat, both for the current NASA personnel
and for the people who built the satellite in the first place.
It’s not clear if NASA will
be able to figure out what happened, even if the satellite does come back
online; that information may not have been stored (or may not have survived
after so long).
Via ExtremeTech