Top all-time · #6979
Dmitry Meyer
Personal blog · skyriddles.wordpress.comsciencehardware
Dmitry Meyer writes Riddles in the Sky, a personal blog at skyriddles.wordpress.com about science and hardware. Since 2018, 11 different Hacker News readers have linked it 12 times, most often “NASA’s IMAGE satellite, lost since 2005, is alive”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-05-11, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (4) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Dmitry Meyer's blog as a source on amateur tracking and recovery of lost spacecraft, including the IMAGE satellite and the STEREO-A downlink. The comments cite it for those posts.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 4 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
A blog dedicated to observing, mostly classified, satellites.
Most-linked posts?
- NASA’s IMAGE satellite, lost since 2005, is alive5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2018-01-25
- Stereo-A Comes Home – Riddles in the Sky3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-07-13
What Hacker News says?
If you're talking about IMAGE it was known where it was NASA just didn't know that it was still transmitting. IIRC the discoverer actually used the orbital elements to determine what satellite he was seeing. They still had an active and accurate TLE for it they'd just stopped checking because NASA thought it was dead in space after the eclipse a couple years ago failed to reset the broken power supply. [0] [0] https…
Comment linking /2018/01/21/nasas-long-dead-image-satellite-is-alive/
on “FCC Accuses Stealthy Startup of Launching Rogue Satellites”Submitted NASA’s IMAGE satellite, lost since 2005, is alive as a story · 826 points
HN discussionAccording to the astronomer's later blog dated 27th Feb 2018, IMAGE went silent again. https://skyriddles.wordpress.com/2018/02/27/space-strikes-ba...
Comment linking /2018/02/27/space-strikes-back-image-returns-to-silence/
on “NASA confirms amateur astronomer has discovered a lost satellite”Submitted Recovering Iran’s NOUR 01 ‘Military Satellite’ as a story · 110 points
HN discussionIf you want to decode the downlink of a more recent probe, here's the details (apparently NASA don't have the source code for the decoder, but a binary was found): https://skyriddles.wordpress.com/2023/07/03/stereo-a-comes-h...
Comment linking /2023/07/03/stereo-a-comes-home/
on “NASA mistakenly severs communication to Voyager 2”Submitted NASA’s Long Dead ‘IMAGE’ Satellite Is Alive as a story · 6 points
HN discussionThe blog link for those interested: https://skyriddles.wordpress.com/2018/01/21/nasas-long-dead-...
Comment linking /2018/01/21/nasas-long-dead-image-satellite-is-alive/
on “Latest Data from IMAGE Indicates Spacecraft’s Power Functional”Submitted You can call me Dmitry Meyer as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted NASA’s Long Dead ‘Image’ Satellite Is Alive (2018) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Stereo-A Comes Home – Riddles in the Sky as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Capturing and Demodulating Deep Space Satellite Images at Home as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted X Marks the Orbit? – Riddles in the Sky as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
