IMAGE Reappeared After Twelve Years

NASA lost contact with its Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration satellite, known as IMAGE, in December 2005 and heard nothing from it for more than 12 years. In January 2018, Canadian amateur astronomer Scott Tilley detected a signal that he believed came from the missing spacecraft. NASA used its Deep Space Network to investigate, while the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory confirmed the satellite's identity through its identification code, 166. IMAGE transmitted basic data suggesting that its main control system still worked, but its weakening signal disappeared again in February 2018.

Previous Fact Next Fact