The satellite, launched in 1967, has been orbiting the Earth for decades with no one listening. An amateur radio hobbyist has zeroed in on the signal of a U.S. military satellite abandoned nearly fifty years ago. The LES-5 satellite, launched in 1967, was an early experiment in satellite-based communications broadcasting continuously since it was launched in 1967. It was decommissioned and placed in a “graveyard orbit” in 1972. But incredibly it’s still working and is transmitting to anyone able to listen.
Scott Tilley, an amateur radio operator living in British Columbia, makes a hobby of re-establishing contact with long-lost satellites. Tilley has helped NASA locate the IMAGE satellite, lost for 13 years in Earth’s orbit, as well as one of the U.S. Navy’s Transit series of navigational satellites. Recently Tilley took interest in LES-5, an experimental satellite developed by MIT’s Lincoln Lab and launched into orbit in 1967.
Read all about it here.