An experimental American spy satellite thought lost after going undetected for 25 years has finally been found, scientists reported on May 8, Space.com writes.
“The S73-7 satellite has been rediscovered after 25 years without being tracked.”said astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell. He claims the satellite reappeared on April 25, citing data from the US Space Force.
The S73-7 (Infrared Calibration Balloon) satellite, 66 cm in diameter, was launched as part of the US Air Force’s space test program on April 10, 1974, using a much larger spy satellite. big.
According to Gizmodo, S73-7 was supposed to inflate after launch, but something went wrong and the satellite disappeared into outer space. McDowell found that scientists lost sight of it twice, once in the 1970s and then again for much longer periods starting in the 1990s, when ground-based sensors could no longer detect it.
For a quarter of a century, analysts at the 18th Space Defense Squadron, the group responsible for tracking all man-made objects in Earth’s orbit, saw nothing of the S73-7. According to experts, the satellite was lost among “space junk.”
And suddenly, at the end of April, the S73-7 appeared on the radar. As expected, it was orbiting Earth, but now scientists have been able to track it again.
McDowell told Gizmodo that because the S73-7 is small and largely non-metallic, it is harder to detect by radar. Additionally, every day scientists track more than 20,000 pieces of equipment moving around Earth’s orbit, and this can be difficult.
Source: Rossa Primavera
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