NASA has signed an agreement with an external group to allow an attempt to contact and to take control of the old ISEE-3 (International Sun/Earth Explorer 3) space probe, also known as ICE (International Cometary Explorer). It was designed to study the interactions between the Earth’s magnetic field and the solar wind along with the ISEE-1 and ISEE-2 probes but in the ’80s it was also used for the study of comets, hence the name ICE.

The ISEE-3 spacecraft was launched on August 12, 1978 on a Delta 2914 rocket in a joint project between NASA and ESA. The primary mission it was designed for was conducted in the Lagrangian point L1, the first man-made object placed in that area. In 1982, it was decided to reuse ISEE-3 for a new mission so it was moved starting a journey to study comets.

In 1985, the ISEE-3 / ICE space probe passed through the plasma of the comet Giacobini-Zinner. In 1986, it passed through the tail of Halley’s comet. In 1991, NASA approved a new mission to investigate the Sun’s coronal mass ejections. The probe’s activity finished in 1997 and it was decided to switch it off. However, in 2008, NASA found the probe in the heliocentric orbit it was put in but the engineers realized that it wasn’t switched off and part of its instruments were still functioning.

This year, the ISEE-3 spacecraft is approaching the Earth again but the interest from NASA vanished when they realized it would be too expensive to assemble the hardware needed to communicate with a probe that old. However, a group of scientists, engineers and programmers decided to take up the challenge.

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Skycorp, Inc. is the company that legally took over the management of this project, called ISEE-3 Reboot. It signed a Non-Reimbursable Space Act Agreement (NRSAA) with NASA to use a probe no longer used by the agency. This was necessary because otherwise the group behind the project, which also hase the collaboration of the  SpaceRef Initiative. the nonprofit Space Foundation College and others, would have committed an act of piracy.

The ISEE-3 Reboot project has collected $159,502 by using the crowdfunding method. $125,000 were needed to buy the necessary equipment. Once they reached that figure, the group asked for $25,000 more to be able to use NASA’s Deep Space Network in order to accurately locate the probe.

The equipment is also used to create the software that emulates the original hardware to communicate with the ISEE-3 space probe, since it no longer exists. The group still has a few weeks of time to take control of the probe in order to make it go back into a stable orbit, again into the Lagrangian point L1.

So many things can go wrong and make the project ISEE-3 Reboot fail. Even under the best conditions, a space probe so old may have a malfunction. The use of software written specifically to communicate with it may have errors or other unexpected problems. However, if the project is successful, the old probe can be reused for a new mission to another comet. In any case, all data collected will be made ​​public and that’s happening thanks to a group of enthusiasts and many people who donated their money.