Space

Crowdfunding push to bring 36-year old spacecraft out of retirement

Crowdfunding push to bring 36-year old spacecraft out of retirement
Artist's impression of ISEE-3 on a lunar flyby (Image: NASA)
Artist's impression of ISEE-3 on a lunar flyby (Image: NASA)
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Diagram of ISEE-3 (Image: NASA)
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Diagram of ISEE-3 (Image: NASA)
ISEE-3 during preflight testing (Image: NASA)
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ISEE-3 during preflight testing (Image: NASA)
Artist's impression of ISEE-3 on a lunar flyby (Image: NASA)
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Artist's impression of ISEE-3 on a lunar flyby (Image: NASA)
Diagram of the ISEE missions (Image: NASA)
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Diagram of the ISEE missions (Image: NASA)
ISEE-3's mission orbits (Image: NASA)
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ISEE-3's mission orbits (Image: NASA)
Artist's impression of ISEE-3 (Image: NASA)
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Artist's impression of ISEE-3 (Image: NASA)
Recently received carrier signal from ISEE-3
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Recently received carrier signal from ISEE-3
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Putting classic cars on the road or classic boats on the water isn’t that odd, but what about putting a classic spacecraft back into service? The ISEE-3 Reboot Project is a crowdfunding effort aimed at reactivating a comet-chasing space probe launched in the 1970s. Using a radio telescope and a software emulator of the original control equipment to contact and reactivate the hibernating unmanned probe, the hope is to use the International Sun/Earth Explorer 3 (ISEE-3) to conduct a privately funded mission to flyby a comet.

Launched on August 12, 1978 atop a Delta rocket at Launch Complex 17B, Cape Canaveral, Florida, the ISEE-3 is one of three ISEE spacecraft built and operated jointly by NASA and ESA. It was the first to be placed in a halo orbit about the L1 Sun-Earth Lagrangian point about 1.5 million km (924,000 mi) from Earth, showing that such a maneuver was possible.

The 479 kg (1,056 lb) unmanned probe is 1.7 m (5.5 ft) in diameter and 1.6 m (5.2 ft) tall. It’s 16-sided body is plated with solar cells providing 173 watts and it carries 13 instruments, including a magnetometer, cosmic ray experiments, devices for studying the sun, and radio mapping equipment.

Diagram of ISEE-3 (Image: NASA)
Diagram of ISEE-3 (Image: NASA)

ISEE-3’s main mission was to study the outermost boundaries of the Earth’s magnetosphere, make a detailed survey of the structure of the solar wind near Earth, and to measure cosmic rays. When its original mission was completed in 1982, ISEE-3 was temporarily renamed the International Cometary Explorer (ICE) and tasked with using slingshot orbits around the Earth and Moon to send it on a flyby trajectory of the comet Giacobini-Zinner and the more famous Halley’s comet. It was then sent on a heliospheric mission to study coronal mass ejections from the Sun. From May 1997, ISEE-3 was shut down with only a carrier signal left transmitting.

Restarting a vintage space probe

The ISEE-3 Reboot Project consists of the team behind the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP), Space College, Skycorp, and SpaceRef and is working with the cooperation, though without the funding, of NASA. Its goal is to re-establish contact with ISEE-3, order it to fire its engine to alter its orbit to bring it nearer to Earth with the ultimate aim of sending it on another comet flyby mission. According to the project team, the data recovered by the reactivated probe will be crowdsourced.The team says that the use of a radio telescope at at Morehead State University in Kentucky for the job has been secured and that team members at Morehead State University, working with AMSAT-DL in Germany, have already detected the carrier signals from both of ISEE-3's transmitters.

ISEE-3's mission orbits (Image: NASA)
ISEE-3's mission orbits (Image: NASA)

NASA is not directly involved in the project. In fact, it’s already donated ISEE-3 to the Smithsonian, but it is cooperating because it sees the recovery project as an opportunity for public outreach and education. Since no government money is forthcoming, the team has turned to crowdfunding as an alternative with a campaign running on RocketHub until May 18. The funds raised will cover the costs of using the radio telescope and developing new software.

According to the project team, to reboot ISEE-3 the probe must be contacted in May and it must make its orbital maneuvers by mid-June, which include a flyby of the Moon at an altitude of less than 50 km. In the meantime, the team needs to find the original spacecraft commands and develop software to emulate the hardware used to originally control the spacecraft, which will require recovering and analyzing the original mission documents.

Source: ISEE-3 Reboot Project via Make

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5 comments
5 comments
christopher
Loads easier and less risk-prone to find the original hardware controller I'd expect...
The Skud
Probably discarded as "no longer useful" by a beancounter somewhere.
Gavin Roe
what was this satellite using as a propulsion system, ever lasting fuel and batteries
Antony Innit
great idea, but it sounds unreasonable, perhaps even an effort to exploit crowdfunding to pay someone. prior to asking for money, they should ask the archives for fuel data to estimate or to know the amount of fuel left. they should interview the chief of ISEE3 mission to see if he thinks it's reasonable. The time taken to move across the solar system would be 10 years at least, perhaps 20. The quality of the sensors, suitability for a moon and comet flyby, chance of some being defunct 37 years after launch is questionable. chances of total faliure are increased. price for the mission controllers would outweight the scientific value of taking vague measuirements of rocky ice objects, better solve problems on this planet. This should generate so much interest from amator astronomers that it will probably happen, lets see how much the amator astronomers are dubious.