'It was a miracle.' Amazing tales of dead spacecraft that came back to life

CIRBE ( Colorado Inner Radiation Belt Electron Experiment) was a 3 -unit cubesat that launched in April 2023 to monitor charged particles in the inner Van Allen radiation belt.

It was so successful that NASA granted it an extension after its nominal 4-month mission ended.

But on April 15 something happened to the little satellite as it circled 316 miles ( 509 kilometers ) above our heads.

The solar storms were heating Earth 's upper atmosphere, causing it to inflate and increase the atmospheric drag on the cubesat.

IMAGE was designed to study the effect of solar storms on Earth 's magnetosphere.

For five years it provided superb data until one day in December 2005 , it just stopped.

With IMAGE presumed dead, its mission team moved onto other projects.

In January 2018 , an amateur radio astronomer picked up IMAGE 's signal from space.

The first ever spacecraft to be placed in hibernation was the European Space Agency's Giotto mission.

Giotto was reawakened on July 2, 1990 to fly past Earth and gain a gravitational slingshot to send it to a double-barreled comet.