Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Tuesday May 27 2014, @01:52AM   Printer-friendly
from the round-and-round-it-goes dept.

A group of crowd-funded amateurs, students, and NASA retirees are on the cusp of resurrecting and possibly taking control of a disused NASA spacecraft that has been coasting around the solar system since the days of disco.

On 21 May, NASA said it would allow the group to contact the International Sun-Earth Explorer-3 (ISEE-3), which studied space weather after its launch in 1978 and went on to study two comets. NASA stopped operating the spacecraft in 1997, but through the years the plucky probe has kept broadcasting a carrier signal.

The group, called the ISEE-3 Reboot Project, is installing a radio amplifier at the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico. Sometime in the next few days, some of its members will use the powerful radio dish to try and exchange "tones" with the spacecraft. That handshake would be a first step toward regaining control of the spacecraft. In the subsequent weeks, the group would check the spacecraft's vital signs and attempt to move it into a new orbit.

Mission control would be from an abandoned McDonald's at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, says Keith Cowing, a co-director of the project and the editor of the website NASA Watch. Cowing says that the project shows how there can still be value left in projects that NASA deems worthy of discarding. "They left gas in the gas tank and the keys in the ignition," he says. NASA is not paying for any part of the project, and the group has crowd-funded its effort. By May 23, the project had raised more than $150,000. Cowing says that the money pays for radio transmission equipment, rental time on radio telescope networks to track the spacecraft, and travel for team members.

If it all works, it will be a vindication for Robert Farquhar, the 81-year-old who was the mission's original flight director. He has been advocating to revive ISEE-3 for years and notes that it still has plenty of fuel left. He believes that most of the spacecraft's 13 instruments should still be working. Farquhar wants to use the remaining fuel, along with a lunar swing-by in August, to redirect the spacecraft to an encounter with comet 46P/Wirtanen in 2018. "I think there's definite value," he says.

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Pslytely Psycho on Tuesday May 27 2014, @01:32PM

    by Pslytely Psycho (1218) on Tuesday May 27 2014, @01:32PM (#47891)

    http://xkcd.com/1337/ [xkcd.com]

    I'm 55, so not a young soylentil.

    However, (I am unfamiliar with the equipment on-board) if they can pull it off, even if they only get a few pictures or whatever. It still seems like a pretty inexpensive project. And as it is being privately funded, if nothing else, it may give a bit of a boost to interest in the space program(s), both private and NASA.

    Sure, it's going to return a minimal amount of science. But maybe it will have benefits elsewhere?

    --
    Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Insightful=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   3  
  • (Score: 2) by bucc5062 on Tuesday May 27 2014, @02:53PM

    by bucc5062 (699) on Tuesday May 27 2014, @02:53PM (#47925)

    That was one strip that whoosh and I normally get his stuff. Was the message, don't hack unless you are the best? Hackers hate probes? Why crash the system? Up until the last one it was fun to read, then he screwed it up (and yes, I rather like happy endings)

    --
    The more things change, the more they look the same