Can This 1970s Spacecraft Explore Again?, io9
“Imagine the heartbroken wailing and the cries of denial. Insert the demands to find out just how much it would cost to rebuild the antennas in time, and the blank stares when told even $1 was outside of NASA’s limited budget. Soon, the inevitable idea emerged: crowdfund our way back into communication with the little spacecraft. The idea isn’t as crazy as it sounds. “
Everyone But NASA Wants To Wake Up This Long-Dormant Spacecraft, Motherboard
“Where organizations lose their interest–which is to say, funding–the crowd is there to step in. It’s true if there isn’t money for a Veronica Mars movie, and it’s true if the Mars Rover is taking up all of the space agency’s cash and attention. An old, even distinguished, NASA spacecraft is coasting toward Earth, but NASA can’t afford to bring it back online. That’s why a couple of guys want to take on the “geeky endeavor” of bumping it back in to place–with as many 80 year olds as they can find and a satellite dish in Kentucky.”
ISEE-3 – An Old Friend Comes to Visit Earth, (with videos) NASA
“Today, some citizen scientists are investigating whether it would be feasible to communicate with ISEE-3 for the first time in almost two decades in order to send commands to return it to L1. A daunting prospect after all this time with NASA’s old friend.”
ISEE-3 Reboot Project
This is a cool project, with enough documentation I think you can recreate the modulated commands, but you still need to transmit with enough power for ICE to receive the signal properly. That might be the long pole.
Yep, we are working that one… as well as several others!
Do we have some idea at about what range is the attempt to communicate going to be made?
We have a new report today that on the receive side we have a 16.5 db link margin. We are still working the transmit side……. (to the spacecraft).
Where is ISEE-3/ICE now?
Looks like in a month it will be 18 million km away based on the JPL Horizons data.
Some documents here: http://voyager.gsfc.nasa.go…
James
Thanks! That had a ton of good stuff. You have made a significant contribution to the project!
The International Ultraviolet Explorer IUE is supposed to have a very similar command decoder, there is a complete manual on that spacecraft here: http://archive.stsci.edu/iu…
In constellation Taurus, heading to Gemini by Apr 19. RA is 88.5 degrees, DEC us 23.7 degrees. It is 0.1957 au away from Earth … and closing at 3.98 km/s.
http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/hor…
over $4,000 in funding already! keep it up!
over $5,000 now! keep this pace up!
Over $7k now 🙂 Thanks to everyone!
wow, i see it’s even over $8,000 already! you’re really trucking along!
This is the spirit of NASA.
over $11,000 now, very impressive
This http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search… says 10-80kW.
http://ipnpr.jpl.nasa.gov/p…
James, maybe you can find this one…
GSFC Document ISEE-733-74-001, Revision C, dated 28 June
1976 and entitled “International Sun-Earth Explorer – A/C, Electrical
Interface Specification.
Another..
Dynamics during Thrust Maneuvers of Flexible Spinning Satellites with Axial and Radial Booms
Doesn’t Goddard have a library with all this stuff archived?
Only some stuff… We will find out soon what they have. We have a lot of what individuals at GSFC had…
Good luck, gentlemen. I remember tracking ISEE-3 when I worked in the GN at BLT…long nights and low signal strengths.
Too bad you can’t scare up a Harris MFR or two…
over $14,000
keep pushing!
now over $15,000
heavily promote this over the weekend! i know i will be!