Strange signal from 60-year-old spacecraft

A powerful radio burst that once baffled scientists turned out to have originated from an old NASA satellite that had been decommissioned since 1967.

Relay-2 is emitting strange signals even though it has stopped working. Photo: NASA .

On June 13, 2024, a team of astronomers at the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) in Western Australia detected a fast radio burst (FRB) lasting less than 30 nanoseconds. The electromagnetic pulse was so powerful that it overwhelmed all other signals from the sky.

“We were all very excited and thought we might have detected a new supernova or some kind of deep space object. This was a very powerful radio pulse that eclipsed everything else in the sky for a very short period of time,” researcher Clancy James from Curtin University (Australia) told New Scientist .

Initially, experts suspected that this was a signal coming from a distant celestial body. However, after further analysis, the research team discovered that the real cause was Relay-2. This is an experimental NASA communications satellite launched into orbit in January 1964.

Relay-2 was the successor to Relay-1, designed to test communications technology and carry equipment to map the Van Allen radiation belts. After operating for more than three years, Relay-2 stopped transmitting signals in June 1967 due to failures in two of its transponders. Since then, the device has seemingly disappeared into space.

According to the study, the timing of the FRB coincided exactly with Relay-2 passing over the area of ​​sky where ASKAP was observing, which supports the hypothesis that the signal came from a satellite that was nearly 60 years old.

Why Relay-2 suddenly started emitting a large pulse remains a mystery. One theory is that the satellite had been accumulating static electricity for decades and was finally discharged suddenly. Others believe that the satellite was hit by a micrometeorite or space debris, which created a plasma cloud that produced the signal.

FRBs are typically powerful signals emitted from deep space, sometimes releasing as much energy as an entire galaxy in a matter of milliseconds. The Relay-2 event is a rare demonstration of the ability of man-made devices to generate such powerful radio pulses.

"There are more and more broken satellites floating around in orbit, creating all sorts of strange signals. In the future, it will be more difficult to distinguish between the voice of the universe and a hardware failure," said researcher Clancy James.

Source: https://znews.vn/tin-hieu-la-tu-tau-vu-tru-hon-60-tuoi-post1563623.html