You probably have been reading about it while I was visiting a granddaughters graduation.
If you check out the links you will see how a group of folks have gotten permission to see if they could restart a NASA satellite that had finished several missions and was turned off and left to go on its marry way, It just so happens its orbit has brought it back to our area in space and this sparked an interest in seeing how it has survived.
The big antenna at Arecibo, Pureto Rico has been used by SETI before to listen to signals from space and the weak signal of Pioneer 10 was ideal for testing. See the following link for more infromation.
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Arecibo, Puerto Rico 1998 - 2004
Overview 1998
The Project Phoenix Targeted Search System (TSS) returned to the world's largest telescope after an eventful six years. In 1992, when the SETI Institute was last observing in Puerto Rico, the TSS had less than half its current capability and was operated as part of NASA's High Resolution Microwave Survey. Since then, the U.S. Congress cancelled the HRMS, Project Phoenix was born, and Arecibo was closed for several years for major upgrades.
With a system designed to pick up interstellar communication signals operating with the world's largest telescope, it's not surprising that we can detect our own technological civilization. In this page we will present some examples of terrestrial signals.
Our favorite signal (until we get the one from ETI) is from the Pioneer 10 spacecraft. Launched in 1972, it now at a distance of roughly 10,000,000,000 kilometers. Its aging transmitter broadcasts with a power of only a few watts. The huge collecting area of the Arecibo antenna brings it in loud and clear.
Pioneer 10 is now at a distance of more than 11,000,000,000 km (about 6.9 billion miles). It takes more than 10 hours for its radio signal, travelling at the speed of light, to reach the Earth. After more than 10,000 days of continuous operation, the electronics in its transmitter are beginning to deteriorate. In spite of this, the signal from Pioneer 10 is still an excellent test for our system.
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This plot shows the power in 924 channels over time. Each horizontal row of dots gives a snapshot of the amount of power in each of the channels at a specific time. The larger the dot, the more power in that channel. Every 0.7 seconds a new row of dots is added. Over about two minutes the picture shown to the left builds up. If a particular channel always had a signal in it, we would see a vertical line since that channel would always have a more power than the other channels, and so would tend to have larger than average dots.
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Continued ISEE-3 Detection With an 8 Foot DIsh
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Enough about Pioneer 10. What you want to see for this project is information about ISEE-3.
- LRK -
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Recently in ISEE-3 Reboot Project CategoryContinued ISEE-3 Detection With an 8 Foot DIsh
By Keith Cowing on June 10, 2014 9:28 AM
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ISEE-3 Status Report 9 June 2014 (Afternoon)
By Keith Cowing on June 9, 2014 11:45 PM
During our pass at Arecibo today (remotely conducted via laptop in McMoons in California) we switched ISEE-3's B transmittier to a data rate of 64 bps. We hope to eventually leave it this way so as to allow dishes smaller than Arecibo (such as the one at Morehead State University) to complete the link and have solid two-way communication with ISEE-3. Participants in today's pass: McMoons, Bochum Observatory in Germany, and Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. Our next pass at Arecibo opens tomorrow (Tuesday) around 2:30 pm EDT.
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More plots and information at the website. Take a look. - LRK -
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You might well like to know more about ISEE-3, the International Sun/Earth Explorer 3 or ICE as it was named International Cometary Explorer in its follow on mission to a comet tail. - LRK -
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International Cometary Explorer
The International Cometary Explorer (ICE) spacecraft (
ISEE-3 was the first spacecraft to be placed in a halo orbit at one of Earth-Sun Lagrangian points (L1). Renamed ICE, it became the first spacecraft to visit a comet, passing through the tail of Comet Giacobini-Zinner within about 7,800 km of the nucleus.[1]
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How do you fund a project like this if you are not on NASA's payroll?
- LRK -
05/29/14: The ISEE-3 Reboot Project is pleased to announce that our team has established two-way communication with the ISEE-3 spacecraft and has begun commanding it to perform specific functions. Over the coming days and weeks our team will make an assessment of the spacecraft's overall health and refine the techniques required to fire its engines and bring it back to an orbit near Earth.
There is quite a learning curve when you try to put together equipment to talk to a spacecraft and then are trying to write software to command it.
- LRK -
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ISEE-3 Reboot Project by Space College, Skycorp, and SpaceRef
First Contact with ISEE-3 was achieved at the Arecibo Radio Observatory in Puerto Rico. We would not have been able to achieve this effort without the gracious assistance provided by the entire staff at Arecibo. In addition to the staff at Arecibo, our team included simultaneous listening and analysis support by AMSAT-DL at the Bochum Observatory in Germany, the Space Science Center at Morehead State University in Kentucky, and the SETI Institute's Allen Telescope Array in California
If you haven't been following this project you might like to look at an earlier post where they were planning for first contact.
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$159,602
Raised towards
$125,000 goal
Raised towards
$125,000 goal
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There is quite a learning curve when you try to put together equipment to talk to a spacecraft and then are trying to write software to command it.
I can relate to their effort having written software to use down link data from Pioneer 10 that had documentation with entries that would be supplied later, TBD.
At least I had software print outs that I could read what the numbers were.
- LRK -
- LRK -
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http://spacecollege.org/isee3/
ISEE-3 Reboot Project Status and Schedule for First Contact
Dennis Wingo: Today's update regards the progress of the ISEE-3 Reboot Project team in our preparations to contact the spacecraft. We started this effort 32 days ago on on April 12, 2014. Below is what we have accomplished in that time - and the challenges that lie ahead.
I hope you have a chance to check in on their progress.
By Keith Cowing on May 15, 2014 11:37 AM
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Thanks for looking up with me.
- LRK -
- LRK -
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WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK -
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