International Sun-Earth Explorer 3 is coming home, to be met with silence...

[sal_vager]

The ISEE-3 satellite, launched in 1978, is still functioning and its orbit will bring it back past Earth in August, and 12 of its 13 instruments are still working.

Trouble is, NASA scrapped the hardware, and presumably the software they used to control the satellite in 1999.

But what would it really take to be able to talk to ISEE-3 again? I assume hardware exists that is flexible enough to send the signals, and software can run on emulators, at a fraction of the costs NASA fears, but could we really?

The satellite is by all accounts still in good condition, it'd be a shame to lose this opportunity...

[rkman]

If NASA makes the comms specs public, maybe six months might be enough for the geek community to retrieve the data?

[Nuke]

you can emulate pretty much anything on an fpga.

just need some specs, assuming they havent thrown them out too.

[Voidryder]

If we are successful in establishing contact and control, I say we claim it in the name of the Kerbal Space Program.

[minerman30]

If we are successful in establishing contact and control, I say we claim it in the name of the Kerbal Space Program.

I declare thee "Jebsat Mk. II"!

[tiger336]

Ok someone call Nasa for the specs, I think we could get something to talk to it.

[Scotius]

Official partnership of KSP and NASA...what can go wrong? Well, probably a lot of things...but explosions will be glorious!

[Idobox]

You will need a Badass antenna and emitter to talk to that beast.

I don't think any structure smaller than a University would have access to the resources required.

The best hope would be for NASA to give all the info and hope someone somewhere has a transmitter able to communicate with the satellite.

[sal_vager]

More info on the frequencies ISEE3 uses here.

The satellite carries Redundant S-band transponders, each with 5 Watt RF output

Transponder A:

2090.66 MHz RHCP uplink, command or ranging

2270.40 MHz RHCP downlink, telemetry or ranging

Transponder B:

2041.95 MHz LHCP uplink, command

2217.50 MHz LHCP downlink, telemetry

Transmit antenna: medium gain with dual inputs for simultaneous right and left hand circular polarization downlink, 8 rows of 4 elements, 7 dBi, ±6° beamwidth, multibeam, electronically steerable, four lobe, omni directional coverage in azimuth

Receive antenna: 2042 MHz, intermediate gain, 1 row of 4 elements, 0 dBi, ±45° beamwidth

Any HAM operators around?