The Returning Ghost Ship

If you recall the first Star Trek movie in 1979, a returning spacecraft caused quite a bit of carnage on its way back to Earth.  In that case it was V'GER, but we are now faced with a real returning spacecraft from many years ago called ISEE.  It sound as mysterious, if not all-knowing, but we have this one figured out from the start.

The International Sun-Earth Explorer-3 (ISEE-3) was launched back in 1978, one year before the Star

Trek movie, to study solar winds.  It was later re-purposed as the International Cometary Explorer (ICE) to study the plasma tail of Comet Giacobini-Zinner on September 11, 1985.  The spacecraft was decommissioned in May 1997 and NASA lost the ability to communicate with the spacecraft in 1999.  But now it is back, and the rest of the story involves space piracy, a McDonald's restaurant, and a company called Skycorp that sounds a lot like a company from the movie Terminator (and we know how that ended for everyone). 


ISEE-3/ICE is approaching the Earth and a few private scientists have asked NASA for permission to communicate with the spacecraft one last time using funds obtained through crowd-funding.  The scientists hope to reorient the spacecraft so it can conduct more solar wind work.  The whole story and cast of characters was well-told in a New York Times article last Sunday.  It's quite a tale and we can only hope ISEE-3/ICE is a little less confused than V-GER as it approaches Earth. 

Update:  The attempt to restart the spacecraft failed earlier this month.  The team stated, "...we think there is a chance that the Nitrogen used as a pressuring for the monopropellant Hydrazine propulsion system may have been depleted."  However, the team is not giving up.  They believe they can heat up the fuel tank to free up the required Nitrogen.  Stay tuned.