In addition to being a matter of curiosity, the story of ISEE-3 is important as it reveals that the private sector can also make significant contributions to space research, which used to be the exclusive monopoly of governments and the military.
In the past couple of months, a great deal of news was released about one of NASA’s “historic relics”, the ISEE-3 satellite, which was placed in orbit in 1978. NASA abandoned the sat a long time ago, although it is operational even today, and a good number of individuals believed that it could still serve useful purposes.
Although NASA, which terminated support for the device due to budget cuttings, stated that they could provide no assistance whatsoever, they did do the most important thing by giving authorization for access to the satellite that was still capable of communication. This was great motivation for enthusiastic professionals, active and retired engineers, who received support from Google (chrome.blogspot.hu/2014/08/space-chrome-and-amazing-journey-of.html), and launched a citizens’ project in order to give the satellite one last mission before it set out on its journey to leave the Solar System. Acquiring the documentation for the satellite and sharing it with many individuals was the most significant step in this respect.
The endeavour led by the Californian Skycorp Inc. and Google Creative Labs proved to be successful: the satellite, about to be accelerated, flew by the surface of the Moon at a distance of roughly 16 thousand kilometres on Saturday. The instrument then started on its long journey into deep space.
ISEE-3 was well worth of the investment. At the initial stage, the sat transmitted data about the magnetic field around Earth, then this heavy-duty instrument observed comets approaching our planet. The sat was in service until 1997, when NASA decided that it was no longer of use.
However, something must have been done extremely well by engineers in the 1970s as the satellite remains functional even today, which provided inspiration for private citizens related to the profession. This April, they raised over 150 thousand US dollars as community support in order to restart the device in the framework of “ISEE-3 Reboot Project”.
Participants have set up a group called ISEE-3 Interplanetary Citizen Science Mission(spacecollege.org/isee3/announcing-the-isee-3-interplanetary-citizen-science-mission.html) with the main objective of making all the information transmitted by the satellite available to everyone.