Scott Tilley

Scott Tilley (VE7TIL): The Amateur Astronomer Who Found a Lost NASA Satellite

Amateur astronomer Scott Tilley was in his home office on a recent evening, using his radio equipment to scan space in a needle-in-a-haystack search for a spy satellite operated by the U.S. Air Force.

Tilley, 47, launches himself on missions like this nightly. Since he was about 8, he has been a devoted but earthbound space explorer, looking for hidden satellites in the sky for hours on end.

As he scanned the skies that night a few weeks ago, he did not find what he was looking for, but he came across something possibly even better: a different satellite, a weather craft NASA lost more than a decade ago. NASA had searched for the spacecraft, worth about $150 million, for two years before giving up.

For an amateur astronomer, it was the stuff of dreams.

“By far, it’s the most important thing I’ve discovered,” said Tilley, an electrical engineer. “It’s a pretty cool thing in my world.”

Tilley, who lives in British Columbia, had single-handedly located the weather-tracking spacecraft IMAGE, which NASA launched in 2000 and lost contact with five years later.

washingtonpost

swling 

coastalreporter

npr

twitter

skyriddles