New Delhi: Scientists received a mysterious radio pulse from a satellite that had been dead for decades. The signal was so powerful that for a moment, it outshone all other objects in the sky, New Scientist reported. The radio pulse was emitted from a defunct NASA experimental communications satellite, Relay 2, which was launched in 1964.
It was part of the Relay programme, which consisted of two satellites, Relay 1 and Relay 2, designed to test communications in medium Earth orbit. NASA funded both of the satellites. The United States-based space agency stopped using it in 1965, and the technical and electronic devices ceased functioning altogether by 1967.
Last year, on June 13, scientists using the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder detected a small but powerful flash that lasted less than 30 nanoseconds. Clancy James at Curtin University in Australia and his colleagues were shocked as the signal came from our galaxy. If it’s nearby, people can study it efficiently through optical telescopes, so they got all excited, thinking maybe they had discovered a new pulsar or some other object, says Clancy.
Clancy also said that This was a mighty radio pulse that vastly outshone everything else in the sky for a very short amount of time. Scientists studied the source and found that the signal originated within 20,000 km of Earth. After comparing it with the locations of known satellites, they found that the pulse came from the Relay 2 satellite.
As the satellite has been dead for nearly six decades, scientists believe that the signal must have come from an external factor, such as an electrostatic discharge or a micrometeorite. Either it was a spark-like flash that originated from a build-up of electricity, or it was a plasma discharge following a micrometeoroid impact.
