‘Zombie’ Satellite Found By Amateur Radio Operator On COVID-19 Lockdown : NPR

The long-lost satellite was built in MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory.

Pat Greenhouse / Boston Globe via Getty Images

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Pat Greenhouse / Boston Globe via Getty Images

The long-lost satellite was built in MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory.

Pat Greenhouse / Boston Globe via Getty Images

There are more than 2,000 active satellites in orbit around the Earth. At the end of their useful lives, many will simply burn out when they return to the atmosphere. But some will continue to orbit as “zombie” satellites – neither alive nor dead.

“Most zombie satellites are satellites that are no longer under human control or have failed to some degree,” says Scott Tilly.

Tilly, a radio amateur living in Canada, has a passion for hunting them.

In 2018, he found a signal from a NASA spacecraft called IMAGE that the space agency had lost track in 2005. With the help of Tilly, NASA was able to re-establish contact.

But he tracked the zombies, even older than IMAGE.

“It’s the oldest I’ve seen Transit 5B-5. And it started in 1965, “he said, referring to a U.S. Navy’s nuclear-powered satellite, which still orbits the Earth in a polar orbit long forgotten by all but few amateurs interested in hearing it. “sing” as it passes from above.

Recently, Tilly became interested in a communications satellite that he thought was still alive – or at least among the living dead. LES-5, built by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Laboratory in Lincoln, started in 1967.

Tilly is inspired by another amateur who in 2016 found the LES-1, an earlier satellite built by the same laboratory. What intrigued him about LES-5 was that if it was still working, it could be the oldest functioning satellite, still in geostationary orbit.

By scouring the Internet, he found an article describing the radio frequency that LES-5, experimental military UHF communication satellite, must be operated on – if he was still alive. So he decided to look.

“It required building an antenna, building a new structure to support it. Preamplifiers, filters, things that take time to get together and put it all together,” he says.

“When you have a family and a busy business, you don’t really have much time for that,” he says.

But then came the COVID-19 pandemic.

British Columbia, where Tilly lives, has been blocked. Like many of us, Tilly suddenly had time on his hands. He used it to search for LES-5, and on March 24 he hit the radio, the equivalent of paid dirt.

He has since made additional measurements.

“The reason this species is intriguing is that its telemetry headlight is still working,” says Tilly.

In other words, Tilly says, although the satellite was supposed to be turned off in 1972, it’s still running. While the solar panels are in the sun, the satellite radio continues to operate. Tilly thinks it may even be possible to send commands to the satellite.

The MIT lab that built LES-5 is still doing a lot of work on classified projects for the military. NPR contacted its information office to ask if anyone could say more about LES-5 and if they could really receive commands.

But after repeated requests, Lincoln’s lab finally responded with “no comment.”

It seems that even a 50-year-old zombie satellite may still have secrets.