LOST NASA SATELLITE FOUND: Amateur astronomer finds satellite long thought dead

After over a decade of having no contact with ground control, an amateur astronomer has discovered NASA's lost satellite.

[link to www.techtimes.com]
The discovery of Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration or IMAGE opens the possibility of continuing its already successful mission.

On Dec. 18, 2005, NASA's ground control did not receive telemetry signals from IMAGE during a routine pass and the satellite did not respond to any commands since then. At the time, there was a number of possibilities that could have caused the failure but it was ultimately attributed to an "instant trip" of the controller that supplies power to the satellite's transponder.

Over a decade after its last signals were detected on Earth, IMAGE seems to be phoning home. It has just been discovered, still broadcasting, by an amateur astronomer who was not even looking for it in the first place.

In a blog post, Scott Tilley describes that while searching High Earth Orbit for signs of the mysterious Zuma satellite, he detected signals from satellite 2000-017A instead, the IMAGE satellite thought to have been long dead.