A NASA team reestablished contact this week with the International Sun-Earth Explorer 3 (ISEE) space satellite.
The 36-year-old ISEE space satellite was used for exploratory missions after being launched in 1978. It was used to study how the stream of charged particles flowing from the sun, or solar wind, interacts with Earth's magnetic field, according to a release issued by Sky & Telescope.
Once it completed its primary mission, the probe was renamed the International Comet Explorer, and was given new targets to study, like Halley's Comet as it passed Earth back in March 1986.
The probe was assigned to investigate solar storms, known as coronal mass ejections, until 1997, when NASA deactivated the spacecraft.
In August, the satellite's orbit around the sun will bring it back by Earth, something that caught the eye of a group of citizen scientists. The team successfully launched a crowd-funding project to raise $125,000 to reboot the probe last month after realizing last year that ISEE would be passing within Earth's vicinity in Aug. 2014.
On May 21, NASA gave the project its blessings, and access to technical data to help engineers make contact, according to Reuters.
A group of 20 space experts, led by NASA space-watcher Dennis Wingo and Keith Cowing, joined together to form the ISEE-3 Reboot Project, with the goal of reestablishing communication with ISEE.
They knew this would be no small task, since NASA no longer had any of the hardware on hand for communicating with the satellite, according to the release.
Ground controllers last contacted the craft back in 1999, according to the release.
Radio dishes and radio transmitters used during ISEE's active days had long since been replaced in favor of newer gear.
The team first decided it would be wise to get some of the old systems up and running again. Since they raised nearly 160,000 in a crowd funding effort, they were able to find and renovate retro equipment and a radio dish.
On May 29, the team's radio dish in Puerto Rico picked up a connection. The team has released a statement confirming that the entire satellite is in good working order.
It could make a run at a third comet, according to the release. It has no on-board cameras however, but does have its on-board instruments that could gather important data of the comet's charged particles, and electromagnetic fields.
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