On the way to work I pull over to listen for NOAA-15, which is transmitting despite having been scheduled to be decommissioned yesterday. I set-up my ground station opposite the Votivkirche and brace myself for lots of radio frequency noise. The small park I am in is ringed by tall buildings and traffic, beneath is a subterranean car park and construction site for one of the city's new subway lines. I am also encircled by trams, whose overhead power lines surely leak radio waves.

Against the odds, I hear the familiar, piercing, beep beep of NOAA-15. In a Facebook group, I had read comments that said its signal was weak, yet it rises above the radio noise.

The experience is like listening to someone who has come back from dead. NOAA-15 is meant to be silent, stuck in lifeless orbital decay. Yet since NOAA-19 developed an 'anomaly' and stopped transmitting on Sunday, the satellite's decommissioning has been postponed by a week. In other words, it’s surviving on borrowed time. As I receive its transmission, I imagine that in a last act of resistance NOAA-19 has sabotaged the planned decomissioning, taking control of its timeline and gifting NOAA-15 a extra week of life.