NASA's Zombie IMAGE Satellite is Working Nicely

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rgMekanic

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The satellite that NASA hadn't heard from in 13 years that powered up randomly last week is apparently working well. NASA has stated that the IMAGE spacecraft's battery is fully charged, and that overall, the satellite itself seems to be in good shape. NASA is putting together a small control center now to re-create the 12 year old software and turn on the science instruments.

NASA stuff never fails to amaze. We wrote about this last week when the satellite randomly turned on after 13 years, and I still can't wait to see what kind of data they end up extracting from it.

As we move forward, NASA is starting to recreate a small control center that can generate the commanding needed to better understand and control the satellite. This will then allow us to gain insights into the state of various science instruments, and see whether any are still functional. Should any of the instruments be functional, NASA will convene a panel of external scientists to assess the science potential in the context of constrained budgets for operating spacecraft.
 
The Reptilians shut it down and wiped the memory because of what it discovered.

In all seriousness, it would be funny if it was a software error that made it lose contact for that period of time then just turn back on and start working again.
 
umeng2002 said:
The Reptilians shut it down and wiped the memory because of what it discovered.

In all seriousness, it would be funny if it was a software error that made it lose contact for that period of time then just turn back on and start working again.
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Yeah, some programer fat fingered a scheduled shut down and reboot date.

Or aliens. When NASA gets an alien virus after connecting with this "dormant" satellite they're going to be sorry.
 
I actually wonder if they ever thought against if they should connect with a satellite that has been lost in space for 13 years or were they like giddy school children and cared not?

Also, how do they know it was off? They lost signal but on January 20th an amateur astronomer recorded observations of a signal which was confirmed to be from IMAGE. How do they know it wasn't always transmitting and they just lost it if it had not been for this amateur that found it?
 
Lol.

They have to recreate the software?


Not a single copy was archived for posterity? Not even the source code?
 
It's going to broadcast the code that turns us all into Zombies? Yeah for zombie apocalypse. Be interesting though if it can be made useful again. They tried this once before some years ago (on a different sat) but it didn't work. Hmmm...maybe it got hot enough for the solder to reflow ;).
 
umeng2002 said:
The Reptilians shut it down and wiped the memory because of what it discovered.

In all seriousness, it would be funny if it was a software error that made it lose contact for that period of time then just turn back on and start working again.
Click to expand...

My guess: A software/hardware error caused it to go into the equivalent of "safe mode", where ANOTHER error caused it to hard lock. Fast forward a decade or so, and the batteries drained and the entire thing shut down. Fast forward another year or two and the batteries charged enough for it to restart, clearing the fault.
 
gamerk2 said:
My guess: A software/hardware error caused it to go into the equivalent of "safe mode", where ANOTHER error caused it to hard lock. Fast forward a decade or so, and the batteries drained and the entire thing shut down. Fast forward another year or two and the batteries charged enough for it to restart, clearing the fault.
Click to expand...
So basically they put Windows on it.
 
The watchdog timers should have caught the hardlock issue, must have been more serious than that.

I suspect the error wasn't recorded/logged by the onboard computers, likely we'll never know what really happened.

Might also be hard to justify dedicating resources to a renewed mission, as who knows how long it will stay alive.
 
Watch them do all the work to get back into communicating with it, and then it shuts off again....


That would suck. Take another 4 years for Side B to come back on...


The satellite's like..."WTF YALL BEEN?!...I been waitin YEARS for you to answer me!"
 
So NASA what are you in need of for the right price you can have a machine from my closet.
I have machines from the late 90s to about 2009
 
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The conspiracy theorist in me wants to think that it has been secretly working all along doing all sorts of nefarious things like spying on you in your back yard and relaying child porn on Trump's behalf.
 
It was undergoing an unplanned windows update and just finished rebooting.

"Oh, I'm sorry. Did our update policy interfere with your work?"
 
Gottfried Leibnizzle said:
The conspiracy theorist in me wants to think that it has been secretly working all along doing all sorts of nefarious things like spying on you in your back yard and relaying child porn on Trump's behalf.
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You do realize that Obama was in office for the bulk of the time the satellite has been dormant right? I know it doesn't fit your anti-Trump narrative though which is what you're really trying to post about.
 
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