How to Decode Satellite Signals

A satellite that had been put into a sort of parking orbit where it ended its natural life and was just going round and round up in space came back to life. Some radio hams out there on the internet had discovered this satellite was broadcasting and had started trying to talk to it. The physics behind it goes along the lines of when the battery finally expires, it kind of goes short circuit. And so the electricity generated by the solar panels is passed straight through to the rest of the satellite. So satellites were coming back to life that were once dead and people were picking up the radio signals and trying to decode it. That led me to sat dump. It looks like magic to me. Sp