As humanity, we have left so many objects in space that space junk has become a serious problem. Many of these objects are simply satellites left in orbits too high to fall back to Earth. However, the death of a satellite does not mean that its story is completely over. Six of them showed that sometimes satellites can come back to life spontaneously and unexpectedly. These spacecraft orbiting our planet are called zombie satellites.
What is a zombie satellite?
A zombie satellite can be any satellite that starts communicating again after a long period of silence. Often, these satellites lose their orbits or are unable to operate themselves and reach a point where the ground can no longer touch them. And then they spontaneously start working again, or smart people around the world manage to find new ways to communicate.
Oldest zombie satellite: Transit 5B-5
It would be appropriate to start the introduction of these zombie satellites with the oldest. Transit 5B-5 was launched in 1965. Transit was the forerunner of GPS, one of the first satellite navigation systems. To increase its longevity, the satellite was nuclear powered and was in a stable polar orbit, meaning its orbit was between 60 and 90 degrees relative to the equator. Although operators could not control it, its communications were heard long after the Transit was discontinued in 1996.
The term zombie may not be quite accurate for the Galaxy 15, a telecommunications satellite operated by Intelsat. Launched in 2005 with a 15-year mission, the satellite left the orbit given to it in April 2010 after the operator lost control. Galaxy 15 appeared to have disappeared, but in December 2010 the satellite rebooted itself and Intelsat was able to put it back into its original orbit. So it was brought back to life completely.
AMSAT-OSCAR 7 is among the longest communication gap records. Launched in November 1974, this satellite was an amateur radio satellite operating for 7 years. A battery failure ended its mission in 1981, but 21 years later, on June 21, 2002, the satellite began communicating again.
Amateur radio operators, especially Scott Tilley, actually played a big part in all of this. Tilley managed to receive communication in 2020 from the Lincoln Experimental Satellite LES-5, which was first launched by the US Air Force in 1967. This satellite only worked when the solar panels received sunlight. A few years ago, he was also able to locate the IMAGE satellite, another zombie satellite that was “lost” by NASA in 2005.
Tilley was actually looking for an entirely different satellite, a secret US satellite known as USA-280 or Zuma. The satellite was probably lost during SpaceX’s launch in 2018.
Examples of zombie satellites include LES-1, another of the Lincoln Experimental Satellites. It was launched in 1965, but never reached optimum orbit to test the use of Super High Frequency radio transmission and spiraled out of control in space. So you can imagine the surprise of hearing from him in 2012, 47 years after he disappeared…
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