Zombie Satellite Speaks! NASA's Relay-2 Sends Mysterious Signal After 57 Years
Okay, this is wild. Imagine you're an astronomer, scanning the skies for signals from distant galaxies. Then, out of nowhere, a powerful burst of radio waves hits your instruments. It's stronger than anything else you're detecting. Exciting, right? You think you've found a new pulsar, maybe even something weirder. That's what happened to a team in Australia.
But here's the twist. It wasn't some exotic cosmic event. It was Relay-2, a NASA satellite launched way back in 1964! This thing was supposed to be dead. Silent since 1967 when its transponders failed. Yet, almost 60 years later, it burped out a signal loud enough to grab everyone's attention. I mean, talk about a comeback.
The burst, a fast radio burst (FRB), lasted less than 30 nanoseconds. Now, FRBs are usually from deep space. They pack a HUGE amount of energy into a tiny timeframe. This one, though, was different. It lined up perfectly with Relay-2 passing overhead. Spooky, right?
So, what caused it? That's the million-dollar question. One theory is that the satellite built up static electricity over decades and then discharged it all at once. Think of it like a cosmic lightning strike. Another idea is that a tiny space rock hit Relay-2, creating a small burst of plasma. Either way, it's pretty amazing that something that old could still have this kind of energy stored up.
Here's my take: space is getting crowded. We're launching more and more satellites, and a lot of them will eventually become space junk. This means more weird signals, more cosmic background noise. It's going to get harder to tell the difference between a genuine message from the universe and a hiccup from a defunct satellite. I wonder what else is floating up there, waiting to surprise us.
Source: Gizmodo