IN 1997 NASA sent a command that, after two decades of service, finally shut down ISEE-3, a satellite launched in 1978 that had done duty as both a solar observatory and a comet chaser. But, as Babbage reported on May 30th , rumours of its final death have proven greatly exaggerated. On that date, making use of the facilities at the Arecibo observatory in Puerto Rico, a team of scientists and space buffs going by the name of the ISEE-3 Reboot Project managed to make contact with the dormant satellite, and tickle it back into life. 
 
 Yesterday, that same team of citizen scientists—including the original mission's flight dynamicist—fired the craft's propulsion system for the first time since 1987. It went off without a hitch, allowing the satellite to increase its rotation rate from 19.16 revolutions per minute (rpm) to 19.76 rpm. That is the rate mandated by the satellite's original specifications, and leaves it ready to perform other manoeuvres in future. 
 
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 In the month since re-waking ISEE-3, and with the assistance of both Arecibo and the global Deep Space Network (DSN), that team has been testing command responses and poking gently at the instrumentation on board. Doing so is not easy. The original control code is long gone, so the team has had to improvise their own. The satellite lacks any program storage: each command to be executed must be sent one at a time and acknowledged for the group to be sure they can proceed to the next step. 
 
 The project to revive the satellite has multiple purposes, one of them to ignite interest among the general population about space exploration and research at a time when the costs of launching objects into orbit around earth have fallen sharply . Last November, a high school put a satellite up, and it won't be the last. 
 
 Another is to show how modern tools, such as software-defined radios (in which a radio's capabilities are defined in computer software rather than in a specific piece of hardware), can be used in powerful ways that formerly required a massive capital infrastructure. These days, miracles can be accomplished with a small bit of radio hardware and a laptop. And the reboot will generate new scientific research. The first science data in 29 years was received days ago from the craft's magnetometer. (At 44 years old, the magnetometer is even more ancient than the rest of the craft: it is a prototype built for the Pioneer missions several years earlier.) 
 
 At this writing, the ISEE-3 is 6.28m km from Earth, and only a matter of days remain in which the right combination of maximum thrust, available fuel and orbital mechanics exist to nudge it into a new, stable orbit for its latest incarnation as a research mission. The exact details are still to be finalised, but one option is that it will resume its original task of watching the sun. The group will be consulting shortly with NASA for its "authorisation to proceed" for its next thruster firings. The old boat has some life in her yet. ||||| ‘Citizen scientists’ take control of satellite abandoned by NASA in 1997 
 
 By Tom Boggioni 
 
 Friday, July 4, 2014 15:59 EDT 
 
 Having received the blessing of NASA, — and following a successful crowd-funding campaign — a group of ‘citizen scientists’ have taken control of an abandoned NASA satellite with plans to put it back to work again. 
 
 In May the National Aeronautics and Space Administration gave permission to the group to attempt to put the 36-year-old decommissioned International Sun/Earth Explorer-3 (ISEE-3) spacecraft back into service for their own research purposes. 
 
 According to The Economist, the satellite team – which included the original mission’s flight dynamicist - successfully fired the craft’s propulsion system this week for the first time since 1987, pulling it out of a graveyard orbit around Earth and setting it on a usable course. 
 
 Provided with technical data from NASA, and working at the Arecibo observatory in Puerto Rico, the team of scientists, who go by the name of the ISEE-3 Reboot Project, have been able to communicate with the satellite but have been hindered in their work since it does not possess the memory storage capabilities developed since 1978 . 
 
 According to the scientists and engineers, all commands must be sent one message at a time and then they must wait for an acknowledgement before proceeding to the next step. 
 
 Launched in 1978, the International Sun/Earth Explorer-3 (ISEE-3) spacecraft studied how the stream of charged particles flowing from the sun, the so-called solar wind, interacts with Earth’s magnetic field. 
 
 The group hopes their efforts will ignite interest in space exploration and research at an time when funding is drying up, as well as possibly having the satellite resume its original task of watching the sun. 
 
 The enthusiasts now plan to consult with NASA for its “authorization to proceed” for its next thruster firings. 
 
 [Image, artist's rendering via AFP] ||||| A group of citizen scientists has commandeered a NASA spacecraft that was launched in 1978 and had gone unused since 1997. 
 
 Today the group made first contact with the International Sun-Earth Explorer-3 (ISEE-3) when the spacecraft acknowledged receiving a signal from the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, says Keith Cowing, co-director of the ISEE-3 Reboot Project, a group of about 20 volunteer space buffs. “We knew we could do this—it’s a vindication,” he says. “It’s sort of like reaching back in time to grab something that otherwise would have been lost.” 
 
 Cowing says that the group is now getting telemetry data from the spacecraft. Over the coming days, they will try to understand the health of the spacecraft and its 13 scientific instruments. The spacecraft was launched to study space weather and is due to make a close pass around the moon. 
 
 Next month, they plan to instigate a burn with the remaining fuel and move the spacecraft into a new orbit. Also in June, they plan to start communicating with ISEE-3 from a second radio telescope, a 21-meter dish at Morehead State University in Kentucky. This dish is more movable than the massive Arecibo telescope and can better track the spacecraft as it gets closer to Earth, Cowing says. 
 
 The ISEE-3 Reboot Project raised more than $150,000 in crowd-funding to support its volunteer efforts.
– A satellite originally launched in 1978 is getting a new lease on life after NASA stopped using it. NASA shut down the satellite, called ISEE-3, in 1997, and it's been spinning uselessly around the sun for years. But a crowdfunded team of "citizen scientists" last month got NASA's permission to use it again for research, the Raw Story reports. In May, they were able to communicate with it, the Economist reports, and this week, they relaunched its propulsion systems. Now, it's once again rolling at its intended speed, the Economist notes, and the team plans to alter its trajectory next week, NBC News reports. So what will the experts do with it? For one thing, they're hoping to show off the power of modern technology: Tasks that once required giant infrastructures can now be achieved with software-based radios, the Economist notes. What's more, the experts are hoping to fuel renewed interest in space exploration.