NASA confirms its undead satellite is operational

Zeddicuz

[br] [br][br][br]Late last month, news broke that a satellite sleuth had spotted what appeared to be a lost NASA probe alive and sending out data. Now, NASA has officially confirmed the identity of the satellite as the IMAGE orbiter and is in the process of restoring the capability of processing the data that it is sending down. While we don't yet know whether any of its instruments are operational, one of its original team members is arguing that the hardware can still produce valuable science.[br][br]And NASA has determined that the craft's return to life is even more mysterious than we'd realized. When IMAGE originally lost contact, it was using its backup hardware after the primary set shut down. Upon its return, IMAGE is using its primary hardware again.[br][br]"The types of hardware and operating systems used in the IMAGE Mission Operations Center no longer exist," NASA's Miles Hatfield wrote, "and other systems have been updated several versions beyond what they were at the time, requiring significant reverse-engineering."[br][br]Patricia Reiff, one of the original team members from 2000, said that there's a lucky break for those tasked with restoring the original operating environment. The software for IMAGE was stored on an old data tape that would be unreadable for any modern hardware. But NASA is a partner (with the ESA) on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft, which has now been in operation for more than 20 years. Thanks to its vintage nature, the SOHO team has a tape drive that can read the four millimeter cassette that holds IMAGE's software.