Resident Blog Fodder: NASA, Ever Full Of Idiots, Strikes Again
(CNN) For 12 years, a NASA satellite called IMAGE was lost in space.
NASA scientists hadn't heard from the satellite since 2005, after it abruptly stopped responding.
But earlier this month, an amateur astronomer happened to be searching for traces of the secretive Zuma mission launched by SpaceX when he stumbled onto something entirely different: signals from a satellite that was not accounted for.
Scott Tilley, who is based in Canada, then matched the signal to a NASA spacecraft and theorized that it was the long-lost satellite IMAGE. He blogged and tweeted about his findings. He also reached out to the principal investigator who had been responsible for the satellite's mission, according to Tilley's blog.
NASA set off to investigate and trained its Deep Space Network, a constellation of radio telescopes used to communicate with space missions, to search for the satellite. Five separate antennas then confirmed the signal and matched the satellite's identity.
Full story here.
Gosh it’s been all of two weeks since the last time I wrote the words “NASA’s a bunch of fucking idiots” but here we are again. In case you missed it, NASA’s the agency that can’t find new planets, won’t go to new planets if we find them, is obsessed with boring places like the moon and “Mars”, and seemingly does everything in its power to make space as dull as possible. I was trying to move on from NASA: I’d heard it’s not healthy to spend all day angry so I was trying to blog about things that made me feel happy and not murderous. I thought I was making progress: it felt good to be blogging with less rage and vitriol, and I felt like I’d finally turned a page, but then this happened. NASA had to go and lose a satellite a decade ago only for some amateur stargazer to find it.
That’s right, the government agency in charge of all things space got one upped by some moonlighter with a pocket telescope, and here we go again. Have you no pride, NASA? Have you no decency? When you lose a satellite, it’s on you to find it. It goes without saying that if someone else finds something that you lost in the first place; you’re indebted to them. It’s a weird sense of superiority. Whenever I get in a fight with my beta roommates I hide their keys and let them run around screaming for a while until they get tired out. When I finally “find” the keys I seem like the man, they seem like losers, and everybody’s reminded who the resident alpha is. Well, not that we needed any additional assurance as to such, but NASA is not the alpha by any means, and that’s old news.
NASA did you even try and find this satellite? Come on be real with us. How does this guy find this shit and you do not? You’re NASA! You are the resident experts on space. Am I wrong to be labeling this as incompetent? It's fucking incompetent! I hate to say it folks, but in the case of an extinction-threatening asteroid we are genuinely, completely, totally, no doubt about it, 120% fucked. This isn't the NASA of yesteryear; no this is drunk and washed up NASA. This NASA blows. Looks like we'll be putting all of our hopes in Scott Tilley, Canadian amateur astronomer and blogger: that's right folks, our next savior proved his mettle in blog life, it could be worse.
