Private Team Wants to Bring 36-Year-Old NASA Probe Out of Retirement, Space.com
“The golden years may be about to end for a 1970s-era NASA spacecraft. A crowdfunded team of engineers, programmers and citizen scientists aims to bring out of retirement the International Sun-Earth Explorer 3 probe (ISEE-3), which launched in 1978 and ceased science operations in 1997. In the coming months, the group intends to move ISEE-3 from its orbit around the sun to a stable spot close to Earth. The probe could stay there and study space weather, or it could jump off to chase down a comet, as it did several other times during its working life.”
Space buffs hope to reawaken old NASA probe, Orlando Sentinel
“A group of garage engineers — ranging from a 23-year-old former UCF student to an 81-year-old ex-NASA official — wants to get the bookshelf-sized probe working again when it whips by the moon this summer. The aim is to restart its mission of monitoring space weather and — if the group can pull it off — send it to study an incoming comet in 2018. “This is something that has never been done before,” said Robert Farquhar, 81, a former NASA manager who worked with the spacecraft in the 1980s.”