Recently, a “Zombie Satellite” has been discovered by a radio amateur enthusiast named Scotty Tilley. Scotty Tilley is a resident of British Columbia, Canada, who made an extraordinary discovery when he found a Zombie Satellite that had been launched in 1967 by the U.S military.
The satellite was found orbiting the earth in the “Graveyard orbiting zone.” A place where all the old satellites go and die after their purpose is achieved. The zone is approximately 22,400 miles above the earth, according to NASA. It is by far the furthest satellite activity from the earth, which is almost 200 miles away.
Scotty Tilley posted a video on his Twitter account along with a post that read, ” Well folks, here’s what appears to be a new Zombie Sat! LES-5 [2866, 1967- 066E] in a GEO graveyard orbit.” Furthermore, Scotty Tilley says, ” Conformation will occur at -0445 UTC this evening when the satellite should pass through the eclipse.” Additionally, he wrote, ” If so, then this is definitely the oldest emitting GEOsat I know of.” This post was posted on his official Twitter account on March 25, 2020.
Moreover, on April 6 April 6, 2020, he posted pictures of the data and wrote, ” LES-5 has set behind the mountains to my east, thus concluding data collection. Here’s the final full pass summary. Decoding of the telemetry data will occur over the next few days.”
According to NASA, the LES-5 was launched on July 1, 1967. Moreover, the satellite was a part of the Tri-service program 591 by the Department of Defense and was built by Lincoln Laboratory (MIT) during that time.
The discovery has been truly shocking, and data reports say over 5000 satellites were orbiting the earth during 2019. The discovery made by amateur radio enthusiasts is really bewildering and amazing.