{"id":654,"date":"2025-06-20T23:51:16","date_gmt":"2025-06-20T23:51:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/654\/"},"modified":"2025-06-20T23:51:16","modified_gmt":"2025-06-20T23:51:16","slug":"dead-nasa-satellite-inexplicably-comes-back-to-life-to-fire-huge-pulse-that-lit-up-the-sky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/654\/","title":{"rendered":"Dead NASA satellite inexplicably comes back to life to fire huge pulse that lit up the sky"},"content":{"rendered":"

A\u00a0NASA<\/a> satellite that had remained inactive in orbit for nearly six decades suddenly emitted a powerful radio signal, leaving astronomers around the world stunned.<\/p>\n

The brief but intense signal, detected by radio telescopes in Western Australia<\/a>, lasted only a fraction of a second yet became the brightest object in the sky, momentarily outshining entire galaxies and stars.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The source of this unexpected burst <\/a>was Relay 2, a communications satellite launched by NASA in 1964.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After both of its transmitters failed in 1967, the satellite had been silent and declared defunct until now.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Experts believe the signal<\/a> wasn’t deliberately transmitted by the satellite, but was triggered by an external event.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One possibility is an electrostatic discharge: a sudden release of electrical energy, similar to a spark, caused by the satellite building up charge as it orbits through Earth’s magnetic field.<\/p>\n

Another theory is that a micrometeoroid, a tiny piece of rock traveling at high speed, struck Relay 2, causing a burst of heat and charged particles that emitted the brief but intense signal.<\/p>\n

The burst briefly emitted about 400 watts of power, similar to a small microwave oven. The fact that this signal remained that powerful after traveling from space to Earth makes it especially rare.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

Relay 2, a NASA communications satellite launched in 1964.<\/p>\n

Australian scientists, who were scanning the sky for fast radio bursts (FRBs)\u2014short, high-energy flashes typically originating from deep space\u2014made the startling discovery.\u00a0<\/p>\n

According to NASA, FRBs can briefly outshine entire galaxies, a phenomenon that occurs in the blink of an eye.\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, this signal was unique: it originated not from a distant galaxy but from within Earth’s orbit, just about 2,800 miles above the planet’s surface.<\/p>\n

‘We thought we might’ve found a new pulsar or a never-before-seen object,’ Dr. Clancy James, lead researcher and associate professor at\u00a0Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy, told New Scientist.<\/p>\n

‘Instead, we saw an incredibly powerful radio pulse that eclipsed everything else in the sky for a split second.’<\/p>\n

The burst was detected by the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP), a network of 36 radio telescopes.<\/p>\n

Researchers <\/a>quickly traced the source to Relay 2, which happened to be passing overhead at that exact moment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Despite lasting only nanoseconds, the radio burst was extraordinarily strong. Scientists estimated its strength at more than three million janskys, a unit used to measure radio wave intensity.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Australian <\/p>\n

Australian scientists made the discovery while scanning the sky for fast radio bursts (FRBs) , short, high-energy flashes that typically originate from deep space (STOCK)<\/p>\n

That\u2019s roughly 100 billion times stronger than the radio signals from your typical smartphone.<\/p>\n

The shape of the signal was clean and well-defined, allowing scientists to analyze it in detail.<\/p>\n

Relay 2 was originally launched to improve satellite communication and conduct studies on Earth’s radiation belts, areas filled with charged particles trapped by the planet’s magnetic field.<\/p>\n

It carried two transmitters and was designed to spin for stability. But by mid-1967, both transmitters had failed, and the satellite became just another piece of space junk orbiting Earth.<\/p>\n

At first, researchers thought the detected signal came from a distant cosmic object. But a closer look confirmed it aligned exactly with Relay 2’s position in the sky.<\/p>\n

‘This must have been caused by an external trigger, like an electrostatic discharge or a micrometeorite hit,’ Dr. James explained.<\/p>\n

The burst lasted 1,000 times faster than previous electrostatic signals detected from satellites, which typically last a microsecond (one-millionth of a second).<\/p>\n

This makes it the fastest and most powerful signal of its kind ever recorded near Earth.<\/p>\n

While the signal caused a stir in the astronomy world, it also raised concerns.<\/p>\n

Many telescopes scan the sky for signals from far-off galaxies, and an unexpected burst from a nearby defunct satellite could cause confusion or lead to false discoveries.<\/p>\n

Still, some scientists see a silver lining. Dr Karen Aplin, a space weather expert at the University of Bristol, said this surprise detection could lead to new tools for studying electrical activity in space.<\/p>\n

‘It may ultimately offer a new technique to evaluate electrostatic discharges in orbit,’ she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A\u00a0NASA satellite that had remained inactive in orbit for nearly six decades suddenly emitted a powerful radio signal,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":655,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[211,917,916,159,914,783,67,132,68,915],"class_list":{"0":"post-654","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-dailymail","9":"tag-earth","10":"tag-nasa","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-sciencetech","13":"tag-space","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-western-australia"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114718382013348973","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}