The satellite was launched in 1974, disappeared in the 1990s, then appeared again in 2024, how did all this happen?

Do you think it’s bad to lose your keys for several days? Scientists lost an entire satellite for 25 years. The satellite has now been sighted, but the story of the S73-7 satellite is like a cosmic mystery novel. Here’s everything you need to know. A satellite launched in 1974 that disappeared in the 1990s, lost in a sea of ​​space debris orbiting Earth.

For decades, the satellite remained invisible to tracking systems, until this week…when it suddenly reappeared on radar screens. All this was possible due to the efforts of the 18th Space Defense Squadron of the Space Force.

On X (formerly Twitter), Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, announced, “The S73-7 satellite has been rediscovered after not being tracked for 25 years.” The satellite, officially known as the Infra-Red Calibration Balloon, was part of the United States Air Force Space Test Program.

It was launched on 10 April 1974. But a deployment failure left it adrift in space, after which it could not be detected. Often, defunct satellites or debris can remain missing for years in the rapidly moving Earth’s orbit, according to Gizmodo.

According to the report, there are ground-based radar and optical satellites on Earth that are tracking more than 20,000 objects in orbit at any given time. This is a difficult task, because most of these objects do not reveal their identity. Instead, tracking depends on matching orbits, a task that becomes difficult in geostationary orbits where tracking gaps exist.

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McDowell explained that there is actually a flaw in tracking…if you follow the equator, you can hide from tracking. In a way, it is like air traffic control. “There are all kinds of things moving around and if you’re going to try to fly out there, you want to know where the dangers are.” The rediscovery highlights the challenges of tracking the 27,000 objects in Earth’s orbit, ranging from operational satellites to debris.

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