In a case of cosmic hide-and-seek, the US Space Force has located a
tiny, experimental satellite that went missing in orbit for a staggering
25 years.The satellite, named S73-7 Infra-Red Calibration
Balloon (IRCB), was launched in 1974 alongside a massive Cold War-era
spy satellite. Unfortunately, upon deployment, the IRCB malfunctioned
and never inflated to its intended size, rendering it useless for its
intended purpose.Adding to its misfortune, astronomers soon lost
track of the wayward satellite. Remarkably, they managed to relocate it
in the 1990s, only to lose sight of it again. Now, after another
quarter-century, the watchful eye of the 18th Space Defence Squadron has
spotted the IRCB once more.Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist from the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre
for Astrophysics, said on X, formerly known as Twitter: "The S73-7
satellite has been rediscovered after being untracked for 25 years. New
TLEs for object 7244 started appearing on April 25. Congratulations to
whichever @18thSDS analyst made the identification."This has raised questions about how this satellite could seemingly disappear from radar for so long."Maybe the thing that they're tracking is a dispenser or a piece of the
balloon that didn't deploy right, so it's not metal and doesn't show up
well on radar," Jonathan McDowell told
Gizmodo.While the rediscovery holds little scientific value, it highlights the
growing challenge of tracking countless objects orbiting Earth. This
incident also indicates the expanding "space junk" problem, urging
better tracking and management of our increasingly crowded cosmic
neighbourhood.