With three days still left to go on their crowdfunding campaign, theย hackers behind theย Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Projectย who wanted to recoverย the ISEE-3 spacecraft and return it to service, have passed their funding goal.
The project team is still looking for further funding however โ another $25,000 โ so they canย use NASA’s Deep Space Networkย to range the spacecraft, and their crowdfunding campaign has been extended for another week to help reach that “stretch goal.”
Right nowย the team is waiting for theย Space Act Agreementย with NASAย to be forwarded to the lawyers for final review โ it should be signed in the next day or two โ before proceeding. But at least at the momentย they’re on track to make first contact with the spacecraft as early as the start of next week.
While the Morehead State Universityย 21-meter dish will act as theย primary ground station during the mission to reboot communications, until mid-July โ when the spacecraft is within 2 to 3 million km of the Earth โ it doesn’t have the power to establish a two-way communications link. The first attempt to contact the spacecraft will therefore be from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.
Contacting the spacecraft as early as possible is crucial as every day that passesย the ISEE-3 moves aย quarter million miles (roughly the distance between the Earth and the Moon) closer to Earth, and each day that passes increases the the length of the burn โ and hence the fuel โ needed to make the necessary trajectory correction to position the probe into an orbit where it can produce some interesting science.
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