Talking to 1978 Explorer

International Sun Earth Explorer 3 to be exact, ISEE-3 for short was launched in 1978 through a join venture of NASA and ESRO. It spent the first several years of its journey orbiting the sun studying the plasma fields and the solar wind. In 1982 it passed into the tail of a comet and harvested invaluable information there. It did it again in 86. Why? because it could and it was kicking ass and taking names.

It continued to gather info until it was shut down by NASA in 1997. Its floated alone in the dark ever sense, watch the earth from afar.

Lonely no more! A group of enthusiasts recently sought permission from NASA to turn it back on and start communicating with it. And they did just that, after a long bought of trying to figure out how to communicate with the 1970s technology they woke ISEE-3 up.

They've sent a number of basic commands to the satellite, but little more. They are working all that out now.

Trollzah!