Long ago (way before the time of?private space companies and before there are dreams of?bringing pizza to the moon), the United Kingdom launched its first satellite called Prospero X3. It also happens to be the last ? the satellite launched just as the government was canceling its rocket program.?That was back in October 28, 1971. And now, decades later, PhD student Roger Duthie and his team want to reestablish contact with the inactive satellite as a way to celebrate its 40th anniversary.
From 1971 to 1973, the Prospero investigated orbital?space environment. But until 1996, ground control contacted the satellite every year. It's been quite a while since then, and the U.K. Royal Aircraft Establishment's Space Department that took charge of the Prospero broke up long ago. The codes needed to contact the Prospero also went missing. Needless to say, Duthie and his team from University College London's Mullard Space Science Laboratory in Surrey are in for quite a challenge. One that warrants a feature-length screenplay that befits what the media calls them ? astroarcheaologists.
Fortunately, they found the erstwhile missing codes on a piece of paper at the National Archives at London. While they got through the first step, the next ones are comparably harder to accomplish. None of the old equipment to contact Prospero exists anymore, so the team has to build their own from scratch. After that, they have to ask broadcast regulator?Ofcom's permission to use Prospero's radio frequencies. Which won't be easy, as the frequencies are now used by other satellite operators.
In spite of the apparent difficulties, Duthie is determined to make it happen. "It's an artefact of British engineering; we should find out how it's performing," he tells BBC News. If they successfully contact the Prospero, it could even mean that the?satellite is in a good condition enough that the experiments it ran back in the 70s are still running. That's a big?if, of course. But if they do make it happen, Duthie says they can "have drinks and champagne." We say they'll have something better than booze in the end ? bragging rights to call themselves astroarcheaologists. And that job description just looks darn cool on a resume.
BBC via?Discovery
This article originally appeared on Tecca, by Mariella Moon
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