NASA has formed a private team to control a 36-year old spacecraft that hasn't been active for the past 17 years.
The International Sun-Earth Explorer 3 (ISEE-3) spacecraft was sent to space in 1978, along with the ISEE 1 and 2, to study the interaction between Earth's magnetic field and solar winds. Later on, scientists renamed it as ICE and became the first spacecraft to visit a passing comet. The U.S. space agency retired it in 1997.
Seventeen years later, NASA announced the ISEE-3 Reboot Project and allocated $150,000 to recycle the restart the old spacecraft. The original plan for ISEE-3 was to restart its engines on Tuesday (June 17), but due to some circumstances, that step will reportedly be delayed by a few weeks.
Keith Cowing and Dennis Wingo, who used to work on various NASA missions, initiated the project.
According to Space.com, the team encountered difficulties in renting dish time from the Deep Space Network, an array of telescope which is controlled by NASA, resulting to the delay of the project. The group needed rent time from the DNS to locate the ISEE-3 so they could plan how to redirect the probe's path.
Cowing explained that the initial date was set based on NASA's timeline when they were going to approve the reactivation. He also added that the delay in restarting the engine would not have any implication to fuel economy as ground controllers decided to go on with the firing by July.
"We've needed less fuel than we thought, and moving it into this timeframe, it's okay," Cowing told Space.com
Data gathered from space confirmed that all of ISEE-3's 13 instruments remained active. But, the team was uncertain whether all of them were still operational. The magnetometer, a device used to pick up and measure magnetic signals, may still be functioning.
"But that's not our priority right now," Cowing told Space.com "Our priority is to assess the health of the spacecraft, range it and fire our engines."
