The Signal From Orbit Was Coming From Our Laptop
For four days this newspaper reported a repeating twelve-bit sequence from catalogued debris object 25570. The sequence was an artefact of our reporter's analysis software, which reproduces it from a file of silence in under an hour. The struck-through paragraph stays visible.
GREEN BANK, W.Va. — Object 25570 is a thermal blanket.
It was lost during a shuttle mission in 1998. It has been in the public catalogue ever since, its orbit is free to download, and anyone with a receiver can watch it go over.
It is also, in a story told since the 1950s and pinned to this object since 1998, a thirteen-thousand-year-old satellite of non-human origin.
We set out to record three passes. What came back was nothing — and for four days we reported that it was something.
What we published, and what was actually happening
The ninth paragraph of the original story said the recording contained a repeating twelve-bit sequence.
~~The sequence recurred on all three passes at intervals consistent with the object's rotation period.~~
That sentence is struck through above rather than deleted, and it will stay struck through, because a reader who arrives here in five years is entitled to see the shape of the error and not just its absence.
There was no sequence. The pattern was generated by the decimation stage of a consumer analysis package, from any sufficiently low-amplitude input, including no input at all.
Dr. Solveig Barrantes-Ng reproduced it for us from a file of pure silence, on the same software version, in fifty-one minutes.
How we found out
Our correspondent found out. Four days after publication he re-ran the analysis on a control recording of his own equipment pointed at a wall, got the same twelve bits, and telephoned his editor at 06:40 on a Sunday.
We published the retraction that afternoon.
What we changed
A correction that only fixes a sentence is a correction that will be needed again. This one changed a practice.
This newspaper will no longer report any measurement as a measurement unless it has been taken on two independent instruments, with at least one of them not chosen by the reporter. Where that is impossible, the story says so in the paragraph where the measurement appears, in the same size type.
The rule is now clause 7a of our editorial standards and its addition is logged in the corrections archive.
What object 25570 is
A thermal blanket, tumbling, in a near-polar orbit, radar-visible, catalogued, and completely unremarkable except for the story attached to it.
Herschel Pond, who has been asked about it more often than about anything else in a thirty-four-year career, offered the sentence he says he has now given to eleven journalists.
"It is a piece of a spacecraft, and it is up there because we put it there and then dropped it," he said. "I understand why that is a disappointing sentence. It has the disadvantage of being the one that is true, and the advantage that you can go and look."
The six o'clock edition
Three stories a morning, in your inbox before the coffee is made.
Corrections to this story
- retraction — We have retracted an assertion in this story's ninth paragraph that the returned signal contained a repeating twelve-bit sequence. It did not. The sequence was an artefact of our own reporter's recording software, which he identified himself four days after publication and reported to his editor within the hour. The paragraph has been struck through rather than deleted, and remains visible with a line through it, so readers can see what we got wrong.How it happened: A reporter analysed a signal using consumer software without a second instrument, contrary to this newspaper's practice on any technical measurement.What we changed: Paragraph 9 struck through and annotated. The desk now requires two independent instruments for any measurement we report as a measurement.
Sources & Method
Our correspondent recorded three passes of a catalogued debris object using consumer software-defined radio equipment and consumer analysis software. He reported a repeating sequence. He was wrong: the sequence was an artefact of the analysis software's decimation stage, which a radio engineer reproduced from a file of pure silence within an hour of being asked. He identified the problem himself, four days after publication, and told his editor within the hour. This newspaper has changed its practice as a result and the change is described below.
Who we spoke to
- Ambrose Teague, This newspaper's Off-World correspondent. His own observations and his own error, reported here at his insistence May–June 2026
- Dr. Solveig Barrantes-Ng, Radio engineer. Interviewed by video call; reproduced the artefact on request 1 June 2026 Reproduced the twelve-bit sequence from silence, using the same software version, in under an hour.
- Herschel Pond, Retired radio astronomer. Interviewed in person 30 May 2026
- Public catalogue of orbital objects, Two-line element sets for object 25570. Public data, retrieved and archived by this newspaper May 2026
What we could not confirm
- Nothing outstanding. The claim this story originally made has been retracted and the retraction is the story.
How was this story?
We publish the result, whatever it is. Reader verdicts appear on the front page and in our newsroom metrics.
Readers' Letters 2
Printed at once under the name you give and read by the desk afterwards; anything unfit is removed, with a note saying so, and nothing else is ever deleted — only corrected. Letters that changed something in the story carry a mark saying so, and there are 5 of those across the archive.
For anyone wanting to reproduce it: any version below 3.11, any input under about -70 dBFS, decimate by 8. You will get your twelve bits. I got mine from a file of zeros.
Pinned by request of the standards editor: I published a measurement taken on one instrument. That was against every instinct I have from nineteen years in air traffic control, where you never trust a single return, and I did it anyway because I was excited. Do not be excited.