Cryonics satellites were used by Humans in the late 20th century to cryogenically preserve individuals who had passed away. They were equipped with solar panels, and divided into four interior sections. They held several cryogenically frozenHumans that had died of causes that the Humans believed would be treatable in the future.
The satellite was only identified as "an ancient capsule" or "a space module" in the episode. Both the Star Trek Encyclopedia and the Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion mention that the satellite may have been called S.S. Birdseye. The topmost segment of the satellite was labeled as "4077", one of the many references to M*A*S*H.
In an extended scene in the script of the episode, Worf states that, there was no way a satellite like this could have broken orbit and traveled the distance it had on its own power, even in thousands of years. They discover that the empty crypts had been forced opened and the occupants taken. To Data this suggested that, who ever took the satellite away from Earth's orbit probably learned all they could learn from those corpses and left the others behind. [1]
