Mysterious Radio Burst Turns Out to Be From a Dead 1967 NASA Satellite (smithsonianmag.com)
(Sunday June 29, 2025 @03:34AM (EditorDavid)
from the greetings-earthlings dept.)
- Reference: 0178220136
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/06/29/0410213/mysterious-radio-burst-turns-out-to-be-from-a-dead-1967-nasa-satellite
- Source link: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/astronomers-detected-a-mysterious-radio-burst-it-turned-out-to-be-from-a-dead-nasa-satellite-180986884/
An anonymous reader shared [1]this report from Smithsonian magazine :
> Last year, Australian scientists picked up a mysterious burst of radio waves that briefly appeared brighter than all other signals in the sky. Now, the researchers have discovered the blast didn't come from a celestial object, but a defunct satellite orbiting Earth... "We got all excited, thinking maybe we'd discovered a new pulsar or some other object," says Clancy James, a researcher at Australia's Curtin University who is on the Australian [2]Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) team, to Alex Wilkins [3]at New Scientist . After taking a closer look, however, the team realized that the only viable source for the burst was [4]NASA's dead Relay 2 , a short-lived satellite that hasn't been in operation since 1967....
>
> The researchers also discovered that at the time of the event, the satellite was only around 2,800 miles away from Earth, which explains why the signal appeared so strong. The reason behind Relay 2's sudden burst is not clear, but the team has come up with two potential explanations — and neither involves the satellite coming back to life like a zombie. One relates to electrostatic discharge — a build-up of electricity that can result in a sudden blast. Spacecraft get charged with electricity when they pass through plasma, and once enough charge accumulates, it can create a spark. "New spacecraft are built with materials to reduce the build-up of charge, but when Relay 2 was launched, this wasn't well-understood," [5]explains James to Space.com's Robert Lea . The other idea is that a micrometeorite hit the satellite, releasing a small cloud of plasma and radio waves.
>
> Karen Aplin, a space scientist at the University of Bristol in England who was not involved in the study, tells New Scientist that it would be tough to differentiate between signals produced by each of those two scenarios, because they would look very similar. The researchers say they favor the first idea, however, because micrometeorites the size of the one that could have caused the signal are uncommon.
"Their findings were published in a [6]pre-print paper on the arXiv server that has not yet been peer-reviewed."
[1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/astronomers-detected-a-mysterious-radio-burst-it-turned-out-to-be-from-a-dead-nasa-satellite-180986884/
[2] https://science.slashdot.org/story/12/10/06/0021237/square-kilometre-array-pathfinder-goes-live
[3] https://www.newscientist.com/article/2485157-dead-nasa-satellite-unexpectedly-emits-powerful-radio-pulse/
[4] https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id=1964-003A
[5] http://space.com/
[6] https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.11462
> Last year, Australian scientists picked up a mysterious burst of radio waves that briefly appeared brighter than all other signals in the sky. Now, the researchers have discovered the blast didn't come from a celestial object, but a defunct satellite orbiting Earth... "We got all excited, thinking maybe we'd discovered a new pulsar or some other object," says Clancy James, a researcher at Australia's Curtin University who is on the Australian [2]Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) team, to Alex Wilkins [3]at New Scientist . After taking a closer look, however, the team realized that the only viable source for the burst was [4]NASA's dead Relay 2 , a short-lived satellite that hasn't been in operation since 1967....
>
> The researchers also discovered that at the time of the event, the satellite was only around 2,800 miles away from Earth, which explains why the signal appeared so strong. The reason behind Relay 2's sudden burst is not clear, but the team has come up with two potential explanations — and neither involves the satellite coming back to life like a zombie. One relates to electrostatic discharge — a build-up of electricity that can result in a sudden blast. Spacecraft get charged with electricity when they pass through plasma, and once enough charge accumulates, it can create a spark. "New spacecraft are built with materials to reduce the build-up of charge, but when Relay 2 was launched, this wasn't well-understood," [5]explains James to Space.com's Robert Lea . The other idea is that a micrometeorite hit the satellite, releasing a small cloud of plasma and radio waves.
>
> Karen Aplin, a space scientist at the University of Bristol in England who was not involved in the study, tells New Scientist that it would be tough to differentiate between signals produced by each of those two scenarios, because they would look very similar. The researchers say they favor the first idea, however, because micrometeorites the size of the one that could have caused the signal are uncommon.
"Their findings were published in a [6]pre-print paper on the arXiv server that has not yet been peer-reviewed."
[1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/astronomers-detected-a-mysterious-radio-burst-it-turned-out-to-be-from-a-dead-nasa-satellite-180986884/
[2] https://science.slashdot.org/story/12/10/06/0021237/square-kilometre-array-pathfinder-goes-live
[3] https://www.newscientist.com/article/2485157-dead-nasa-satellite-unexpectedly-emits-powerful-radio-pulse/
[4] https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id=1964-003A
[5] http://space.com/
[6] https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.11462
Wouldn't this happen to a lot of old satellites? (Score:2)
by Viol8 ( 599362 )
If either of the 2 explanations were correct surely this would be a rather common phenomenon given the number of old dead satellites from the 60s and 70s that must be up there?
Time to pick up the toys. (Score:2)
by Gravis Zero ( 934156 )
It's clear that it's time for humanity to clean up the mess it's made. It's time to pick up the toys we've simply forgotten about that are drifting about in space.
Australian radio astronomers (Score:3)
You guys recall back in the nineties when they went into a frenzy about detecting a new kind of lightening phenomena (and possibly aliens) and it turned out to be a guy microwaving his burrito? Reference: [1]https://www.theguardian.com/sc... [theguardian.com]
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/may/05/microwave-oven-caused-mystery-signal-plaguing-radio-telescope-for-17-years
Re: (Score:3)
Clearly. It was alien to them.