I think AO-7 did something like this as well. I remember working it many moons ago in the 70's with a 5 watt HT on 2 meters keyed with the PTT button for CW (serious chirp!) and an SB303 receiver on 10 meters to hear the downlink. Then it went dark. Then a number of years back, they think the batteries went high impedance and now it's awake when the sun shines on the solar panels. It was dark for like 30 years. Strange things in space.
On another note, I miss the High Earth Orbit satellites like AO13 and AO40. I'm bored to death with cubesats.
