ICE is alive ! Options

[Rakhir]

This information from Emily is amazing.
http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001673/

ICE is alive and may perhaps be assigned to a new mission.

[Paolo]

Two extracts from "Robotic Exploration of the Solar System - vol 2"

On 5 May 1997 NASA terminated ICE operations and support, but the transmitter was purposefully left on in order to allow further tracking, as was done in 1999 when it traveled behind the Sun and the radio signal was used to probe the corona.

three options have been identified for further extending the ICE mission after its August 2014 lunar flyby, providing it is still working. The simplest option would be to return the spacecraft to its station in the L1 halo orbit, 32 years after it left it. Another option would be to place it into a highly elliptical Earth orbit whose apogee could be lowered by aerobraking passes through the upper atmosphere until it could be retrieved so that its coating of cometary material could be analyzed and the spacecraft finally donated to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. Finally, ICE could be targeted to make a second flyby of Giacobini–Zinner on 19 September 2018. The original rationale for this option was that it would encounter Giacobini–Zinner a fortnight before NASA’s CONTOUR could do so if that mission were to be extended.