Cool! That page indicates that contact with it was lost in 1964. Does anyone know what the oldest manmade object still in orbit of and still in contact with the Earth is?
Isn’t it Sputnik?
I remember visiting the old Soviet space museum in Moscow, which was done up in Stalinist style, very heroic and monumental. And off in one corner, looking out of place, was a mock-up of a satellite with a little dog inside.
So naturally we tourists all oohed and aahed over the cute little doggie, and someone asked the tour guide about its fate. “She died,” she said. “It was just a satellite. It couldn’t land.” And we all looked at each other like, man, those Russkies sure know how to harsh your mellow.
Nah, I read somewhere that it crashed and burned. I don’t remember when though.
I initially read this as “the oldest man still in orbit.”
This turned out to be harder than I thought. You have to define what you mean by a working satellite. As you shall see, it’s not immediately obvious what constitutes the “oldest” satellite.
ATS-3, Launched on November 5th, 1967, is still operational but it was decommissioned in 2001. My understanding is, that with the right equipment, you can still talk to it.
A younger semi-functional satellite found on this site (via an Excel spreadsheet) the oldest satellite in semi-operation is Amsat-Oscar 7 launched on 11/15/1974. Talk about coming back from the dead.
GOES-3, launched on 16 June 1978 is partially functional; it no longer sends images, but instead was converted for use for broadband communications between the Scott-Amundsen South Pole station and the USA (the link provides a fairly respectable 1.5 Mbs).
The oldest mission fully operational satellite I can find is Landsat 5 which was launched on March 1, 1984 and still provides images today.
Maybe the Russians have older satellites, but I didn’t see any listed.
The moon has been orbiting Earth for some 4.5 billion years, and I can still track it optically on any cloudless night. I believe that answers the question of the oldest satellite we’re still in contact with.
You can do better than that. The two Voyager probes (August 20 and September 5, 1977) are also still functional, and returning data, though only barely. Though I suppose it’s debatable whether something on an escape trajectory should be considered a “satellite”.
You probably saw the rocket booster, which also went into orbit. Unless you were in very dark skies and knew precisely where to look, at sixth magnitude the satellite would have been hard to see without binoculars. The booster was about 100 times brighter.
I think the answer to that is Michael E. Fossum, age 53.
I think that would be Timothy Leary. 
You’re good, DrCube. The best I can do is averages out to about 3 in 4 cloudless nights. 
What style of weapon were they using?
I heard they used a catapult that hurled mummified Russian dogs.
If I recall the question correctly (and I hope I do, since I’m the one who asked it yesterday), it was about the oldest manmade object we’re still in contact with. If you’re claiming that the moon is manmade then I’m going to have to ask for a cite!
Thinking about it now, I’m sure you’re right. The satellite itself was very small. It would have been difficult to see, even with binoculars. Still, I’m glad I saw the booster.
How would you know with their cloaking device?
The scope of the OP suggested to me that we were talking about man-made, earth orbiting S/C. Otherwise, I could argue (continuing the debate, “what counts as a functional satellite?”) that Pioneer 10 (launched on March 2, 1972) could conceivably be the oldest operating interstellar spacecraft. There is still enough theoretical residue power to operate one or more on-board instruments, but with respect to transmitter, the distance and decline in the RTG power make it next to impossible to provide a usable downlink (the last successful telemetry received was on a April 27, 2002).
ETA: Rats! I thought Pioneer Six would have won the trophy (launched on December 16, 1965) as the oldest operational satellite–but with a heliocentric orbit, it falls outside the scope of the OP.
They filed an environmental impact report after the fact.