ICE / ISEE-3, First comet encounter September 1985 Options

[bobik]

Garcia, L., R. Farquhar, and T. Eastman (2012), New Opportunities for a Historic Spacecraft, Space Weather, 10, S08008, doi:10.1029/2012SW000832. (15 August 2012)

New Opportunities for a Historic Spacecraft ... Much of the documentation from the initial mission programming was lost, but members of the original team are now working on rebuilding the commands necessary for spacecraft control and data acquisition. Once these commands are rebuilt, the Deep Space Network will be used to communicate with the spacecraft and determine instrument health. Demonstrating that we can communicate with the spacecraft and that it is sufficiently healthy is a crucial step toward a new mission in 2014. On what new adventures do we send our venerable explorer? One option is that it could return to the L1 halo orbit. Much more is known about space weather now than was known 30 years ago. Even so, multipoint space weather monitoring and research are more important than ever, and this spacecraft is an exceptional candidate to serve as a space weather monitor providing complementary and cost-effective measurements of the solar wind. However, ISEE 3/ICE can serve many more purposes. Controlling this comparatively simple spacecraft, now well beyond warranty, would be an ideal training opportunity for young scientists and engineers. A single PC, for example, could support the entire ground system, a prime example of NASA's ability to do "more with less."

[elakdawalla]

I actually talked with Farquhar about this a couple of months ago. I got no news from the conversation though. They're still working on it; there's no update on specific future plans. I can ask around but don't think there'd be much point right now. If I haven't heard anything new before August 2013, I'll begin pestering people then.

[Paolo]

I stumbled upon this conference at the BIS by Robert Farquhar: http://www.bis-space.com/2012/11/29/7813/b...raft-new-tricks

In 2018, it will use another lunar gravity-assist manoeuvre to fly through the tail of comet Wirtanen in December 2018. ISEE-3/ICE will be NASA’s contribution to a proposed joint Chinese-American two-spacecraft exploration of comet Wirtanen.

any info on this?

[Paolo]

watch out for this paper to be presented at this year's IAF congress in September

a unique multi-comet mission opportunity for china in 2018

[brellis]

Emily is the pesterer-in-chief!

[Doug M.]

Has anyone ever heard anything further on this?


Doug M.

[Paolo]

last times I heard about ICE are these two blog posts by Emily:
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakda...g-to-earth.html
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakda...etary-2014.html

ICE will fly past Earth in August. If we want to regain control of this aged-but-still-perfectly-good spacecraft, we must do it early this year. The budget mess is making that seem difficult to achieve. I'll report if I have any further news on that.

[elakdawalla]

I haven't heard anything since then.

[Paolo]

there was a sad update this morning on the ISEE3returns Facebook page:

Communication involves speaking, listening and understanding what we hear. One of the main technical challenges the ISEE-3/ICE project has faced is determining whether we can speak, listen, and understand the spacecraft and whether the spacecraft can do the same for us. Several months of digging through old technical documents has led a group of NASA engineers to believe they will indeed be able to understand the stream of data coming from the spacecraft. NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) can listen to the spacecraft, a test in 2008 proved that it was possible to pick up the transmitter carrier signal, but can we speak to the spacecraft? Can we tell the spacecraft to turn back on its thrusters and science instruments after decades of silence and perform the intricate ballet needed to send it back to where it can again monitor the Sun? The answer to that question appears to be no.

The transmitters of the Deep Space Network, the hardware to send signals out to the fleet of NASA spacecraft in deep space, no longer includes the equipment needed to talk to ISEE-3. These old-fashioned transmitters were removed in 1999. Could new transmitters be built? Yes, but it would be at a price no one is willing to spend. And we need to use the DSN because no other network of antennas in the US has the sensitivity to detect and transmit signals to the spacecraft at such a distance.

This effort has always been risky with a low probability of success and a near-zero budget. It is thanks to a small and dedicated group of scientists and engineers that we were able to get as far as we have. Thank you all very much.

[mcaplinger]

The transmitters of the Deep Space Network, the hardware to send signals out to the fleet of NASA spacecraft in deep space, no longer includes the equipment needed to talk to ISEE-3. These old-fashioned transmitters were removed in 1999.

Given all the negative comments this is producing on the web, whoever is writing this stuff would be well-served to give more technical detail. I found http://ipnpr.jpl.nasa.gov/progress_report/42-76/76K.PDF which indicates that ICEE-3 was never designed to use the DSN for communications and a special filter had to be added to the Block V masers at DSS-14 and DSS-63 in the mid-80s to communicate with it. According to http://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov/dsndocs/810-005/101/101E.pdf the maser was replaced at DSS-14 (Goldstone) in 2010 but the one at DSS-63 (Madrid) isn't going to be until this November, but S-band uplink isn't supported at Madrid because of frequency conflicts.

[Paolo]

speaking of which, radio hams wanting to try to receive the carrier from the probe can find infos on the communication system here and here (scroll to the section on ICE).
orbital data are much more difficult to find and ICE is not on JPL's Horizon. There are daily heliocentric ephemeris up to 1997 here and lots of old orbital data here. Unfortunately, the latter date from before the sizeable 1986 maneuvers (see this pdf for info), So they are probably useless, even if you had a good orbit propagator to take into account all perturbations (including solar radiation pressure that must be non negligeable for such a small spacecraft).

[mcaplinger]

It's worth noting that http://www.r00t.cz/Sats/Grail was able to decode the Grail signal all the way to the actual strings in a spacecraft directory listing, which is quite impressive. I think commanding ISEE-3 is likely out of reach, but decoding the telemetry might at least be possible for these folks.

[Paolo]

as far as I know the transmitter on ICE is only beaming a carrier wave, so there is no telemetry to be decoded

[Explorer1]

xkcd hits a home run again!

http://xkcd.com/1337/

[mcaplinger]

xkcd hits a home run again!

I guess I'm a little surprised that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers_%28film%29 is still in the zeitgeist.