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Enthusiasts take control of abandoned NASA satellite using MacBook, McDonald's and spare radio parts
A crew of space enthusiasts, including a former NASA employee, used their knowledge of satellite technology along with some spare parts to control an abandoned NASA satellite, reports Betabeat. It's the perfect maker project with Kickstarter money providing the funding, eBay as the source of parts, an old MacBook as the console and a control center located in an abandoned McDonald's in Mountain View, California. The satellite's battery has been dead for over 20 years, but it had solar panels to power 98 percent of the satellite's full capabilities. In its heyday, it ran missions around the Moon and Earth, and flew through the tail of a comet. But technology gets old, and everyone happily let the successful satellite go, knowing it would be back in Earth's orbit someday - namely, 2014. Since the satellite went offline, the team had retired, the documentation was lost and the equipment was outdated. They could still hear the satellite out there talking, but they'd need to build the equipment to talk back. The crowdfunded mission will take the operational, but abandoned ISEE-3 satellite in an orbit around the sun, where it will report on solar weather data. Google is helping the team share its mission data publicly on the web in a variety of formats. You can read more the mission and the people behind it in the Betabeat article.
Watch the ISEE-3 lunar flyby live, beginning at 1:30PM ET
A few months ago, the ISEE-3 Reboot Project managed to raise $160,000 to bring the spacecraft back to Earth after 36 years roaming outer space. The team behind the campaign successfully took control of the spacecraft and reactivated some of its scientific instruments, but they found it impossible to reignite its thrusters, so it's sadly never going to make its way back home. That doesn't mean you'll never be able to see the ISEE-3 for yourself, though -- on August 10th, Google will be hosting a Hangout session to livestream the spacecraft's lunar flyby as it passes the dark side of the moon. The tech giant will broadcast from McMoon's, an abandoned McDonald's near the NASA Ames Research Center, and you can tune in through a website built for this occasion called A Spacecraft for All.
Revived NASA space probe might not go back to work after all
Remember the once-dormant ISEE-3 probe that was roused from its 27 year slumber earlier this week? Errm, turns out it's not doing so great. Despite a crowdfunding campaign that raised over $150,000 to bring it back to active duty and a recent successful spin using its aging thrusters, further attempts to move the craft have ended in disappointment.
Retired NASA probe brought back to life after 27 years drifting in space
The last time ISEE-3 fired its engines, Madonna was moving up the charts, the stock market was booming and President Reagan was busily denying that he'd secretly sold weapons to Iran. After that final gasp from its thrusters, in February 1987, the International Sun-Earth Explorer probe would have drifted into permanent retirement -- if a $150,000 crowdfunded project hadn't come along to save it at the last minute. That project has just scored it first big success, by remotely reawakening the 36-year-old craft's engines and altering its course in order to make it easier to communicate with. Keith Cowing, who's co-leading the private group in charge of the resurrection, blogged that it was "all in all, a very good day." If the next steps go equally well, the idea is to reconfigure ISEE-3's onboard computers and sensors so that they can be used for a bit of citizen science during remaining two-month, four million-mile journey back to earth.
Crowdfunding project aims to bring a forgotten space probe back to life
The International Sun/Earth Explorer 3 probe is slated to come home in August after 36 years in space, but a group of engineers wants to use it as a platform for citizen science before it does. Sadly, NASA doesn't have the budget to reactivate a probe's that been decommissioned since 1999 -- so, the team has turned to crowdfunding to get the ball rolling. For those who've never heard of the ISEE-3 before, it was originally sent to space to study how the Earth's magnetic field and solar winds interact. Thus, it has 13 different scientific instruments on board (for measuring plasma, magnetic fields, waves and particles) that students or just about anyone can use if the group manages to recapture it.
