NASA confirms the identity of the lost IMAGE satellite and says it's still operational

On 30 January, NASA said that at least the main control system of its IMAGE satellite , which was re-discovered by an amateur astronomer on 20 January, is operational. [caption id=“attachment_4326497” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] IMAGE satellite which was lost decades ago. NASA .[/caption] Launched on 25 March 2000, IMAGE, short for Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration, was designed to image Earth’s magnetosphere and produce the first comprehensive global images of the plasma populations in this region. After successfully completing and extending its initial two-year mission in 2002, contact was unexpectedly lost on 18 December 2005. After an amateur astronomer recorded observations of a satellite in high Earth orbit on 20 January 2018, his initial research suggested it was the IMAGE satellite. NASA has now confirmed the identity of the satellite. “On the afternoon of 30 January, the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab in Laurel, Maryland, successfully collected telemetry data from the satellite. The signal showed that the space craft ID was 166 – the ID for IMAGE,” NASA said.

The NASA team was been able to read some basic housekeeping data from the spacecraft, suggesting that at least the main control system is operational. NASA said it will continue to try to analyse the data from the spacecraft to learn more about the state of the spacecraft. “This process will take a week or two to complete as it requires attempting to adapt old software and databases of information to more modern systems,” the statement added.