7 ms·
We Are Now In Command of the ISEE-3 Spacecraft
- ColinDabritz 12y agoSimply amazing.
- ShaneOG 12y agoWow. This is an amazing achievement!
- trhway 12y agothis guy's been places :) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ISEE3-ICE-trajectory.gif http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ISEE3-ICE-trajectory.gif
- bashinator 12y agoThere was an article linked here a while back on the guy who designed that trajectory. It was completely intentional that ISEE3 would eventually return for further usage.
- mikeash 12y agoFurther, he would arrange it so that mission milestones happened on colleagues' birthdays or anniversaries, just because he could. What a guy.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- sitkack 12y agoAutistic Comedian?
- ForHackernews 12y ago"Sorry honey, we can't go out to dinner for our anniversary...I have to be at mission control."
- mct 12y agohttp://www.npr.org/2014/03/18/289628696/space-thief-or-hero-one-mans-quest-to-reawaken-an-old-friend http://www.npr.org/2014/03/18/289628696/space-thief-or-hero-...
- troymc 12y agoThe trajectory designer was Bob Farquhar. He's been involved with the space program since the late 1950s. An amazing guy. Here's his recently-published memoir: http://outskirtspress.com/webpage.php?ISBN=9781432759278 http://outskirtspress.com/webpage.php?ISBN=9781432759278
- zaroth 12y agoThat's one heck of a game of shoots and ladders.
- louthy 12y ago... it's seen attack ships off the shoulder of Orion..
- josefresco 12y agoAlright alright, enough of that.
- cclogg 12y agoWhoa I did not know anything about this story until now >< On a related note, I also just noticed that the "Arecibo Radio Observatory" was in Goldeneye!
- duskwuff 12y agoThe Arecibo observatory has the world's largest radio telescope. They're very well known -- while they've been involved with a lot of space research, they're particularly famous for being the transmit site for the Arecibo Message: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_message http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_message
- ToastyMallows 12y agoIt was also in the movie Contact, if I remember correctly.
- bad_alloc 12y agoIs this the satellite NASA had given up because there was no communications equipment left?
- bri3d 12y agoIt sure is! I'd love to see some more technical details but according to this article: http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2014/02070836-isee-3.html http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2014/0207083... Goddard claimed that they couldn't rebuild the hardware that was used to talk to ISEE-3 at reasonable cost. The Space College project are using SDR: http://spacecollege.org/isee3/isee-3-reboot-project-status-and-schedule-for-first-contact.html http://spacecollege.org/isee3/isee-3-reboot-project-status-a... And they used their funding to buy some custom amplifier gear to send to Arecibo.
- arrrg 12y agoFunding, as always, seems to have been the issue. If NASA doesn’t have the money for it (or thinks they have better things to do with the money), they can’t do anything. The explanation of not having access to communications equipment is more about the cost of restoring that ability, not any claim that contacting the probe would in principle be impossible. The message is more or less that they don’t just have some device standing around they can flip on and sit some intern in front of it for a few hours to get this going. NASA wanted to express that substantially more effort would be required. It seems that many people (including people at NASA) are donating a lot of resources, time and money to this project. That’s why this can happen. But NASA can’t budget with the expectation of receiving donations.
- calinet6 12y ago"Can't" is a bit simplistic. Think of it like that old piece of software you wrote when you were young that you've since abandoned, because you know, about 20 years have passed, no one uses AppleII's anymore, 126 some odd other pieces of software that do exactly the same thing but better and faster have been released, and also mobile happened. Besides, you have a job now doing modern things for modern reasons that are actually valuable to people and the world and stuff, so really there's not even a reason to figure out how a 5 and a quarter floppy drive can possibly connect to your rMBP to have a look at the code and see if an emulator or whatever would make it run right. But if someone wants to throw $151,000 in donations at it, sure kids, have a ball. And yeah, of course we'll reminisce and have some fun with it over a beer or two. Those were the good old days, after all, when we were real rocket scientists, and space probes Farquharing around the solar system on a perfectly choreographed dance of not just one mission, but three—no, not two, three—what do you think it's doing right now? You think this kind of thing just happens by chance? Have fun—and bring her back in one piece, will ya?
- apetresc 12y agoAnother xkcd has come true! http://xkcd.com/1337/ http://xkcd.com/1337/
- tonglil 12y agoJust noticed the url is "LEET" too.
- endgame 12y agoThese things happen when people number things in sequence.
- TallGuyShort 12y agoComputer hacking (I know, I know, "cracking") is not THAT common a topic in XKCD - I'm sure Randall knew 1337 was coming up and chose a relevant comic to use that day.
- alxndr 12y agoRandall's congratulations: http://blog.xkcd.com/2014/05/30/isee-3/ http://blog.xkcd.com/2014/05/30/isee-3/
- dTal 12y agoIf they do manage to fire the engines, it has to pass through the lunar shadow on the way back to Earth and as it's running off solar panels this means a total shutdown, which it's never done before (alas, the uptime!). Let's hope it comes back up!
- mschuster91 12y agoI'd be surprised if the probe doesn't carry some batteries exactly for this kind of event...
- transientbug 12y agoIt does have batteries on board however after its long life they appear to be dead.[1] 1 - http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1697/1 http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1697/1
- makomk 12y agoAccording to that article, it also lost power briefly for the same reason during a set of maneuvers that were used to repurpose it decades ago, so it's not the first time this problem has come up either.
- jeroen 12y agoBut that was near the beginning of its life, so the batteries would have worked.
- jccooper 12y agoAfter more than 30 years I'd have to consider any batteries suspect... Much less ones that spent their time in space. Considering it was meant to spend its life at L1 it may not have any batteries. Then again it also doesn't have a computer so it should be fairly robust.
- sitkack 12y ago
- 0x0 12y agoAre there any technical details available? It would be super interesting to see all the stuff that is re-developed from old specs, and to see how all the calculations and commands fit together to reach thw mission goals, or even what the received data and telemetry looks like. Or is this kept confidential to try to prevent outsiders from going at it like in that xkcd posted in the comments here? Or is the only "protection" based on the requirement to have access to those huge observatories?
- railmeat 12y agoAll the public information is available here: http://spacecollege.org/isee3/ http://spacecollege.org/isee3/
- devindotcom 12y agoonly "protection" Arecibo isn't like a public library or something. You can't just go in and start hitting buttons! They used it as the climax of a Bond movie!
- sp332 12y agoNot of Arecibo, of the satellite. Do you need to authenticate with the probe?
- devindotcom 12y agoI doubt it's more complicated than knowing the language and having the proper transmission hardware. 1978 seems a little early to be worrying about hacks of that variety. That said the hardware could also have some kind of encryption built in. I'll ask if I get a chance, though - I hope to get some details from the project soon.
- sitkack 12y agoI think pointing at it is probably the most difficult part.
- 12y ago
- broabprobe 12y agoBrilliantly impressive. Especially considering they're operating out of an old McDonalds on the NASA Ames campus.
- dm2 12y agoA former McDonalds. At first I was thinking you meant they were using McDonalds' free wifi for connecting to the satellite.
- iamdanfox 12y agoTwitch spacecraft anyone?
- ForHackernews 12y ago> We have successfully commanded both of ISEE-3's data multiplexers into engineering telemetry mode. The current bitrate is 512 bits/sec. BITS not even BYTES, let alone kilobytes.
- w-ll 12y agoData transmission is always measured in bits.
- jonknee 12y agoYes, the OP was just commenting at how amazingly slow the connection is. These days we don't think about individual bits per second.
- drzaiusapelord 12y agoStill faster than a 300bps modem that was sold years later and that only had to run over a short run of terrestrial copper.
- geon 12y agoDidn't they usually have 2 air gaps with acoustic transmission in the loop, though?
- drzaiusapelord 12y agoby 1981 or so the acoustic coupler was antiquated. The modem had a controller that handled telephony stuff like dialing, hanging up, etc and a you'd just plug your POTS rj-11 straight into it.
- mikeash 12y agoMy very first modem was a 300bps box that plugged straight into the phone line. I remember being frustrated that I could read faster than the text came in, even though I was only 8 years old or so at the time. When we got a 2400bps modem, it was fantastic that stuff came in faster than I could read it. Bringing the conversation back to space, one of the first things we did with the modem was dial into some public NASA BBS (long distance!) and download pictures from Voyager.
- spiritplumber 12y agoWoo Hoo!
- servowire 12y agoThe fact that this machine is still in operation is awesome. What a piece of engineering.