36 year old ISEE-3 Spacecraft successfully awoken by amateur team

This is a plot of signal received from the satellite and an overlay of the theoretic signal. Carrier (the spike) and modulation sidebands. The frequency will move with time because of doppler, spacecraft and earth are moving relative to each other.

This is a comment made at WUWT by a team member

denniswingo says:
May 29, 2014 at 3:17 pm

Just came down from off the dome at the telescope. Thanks for all your support! I will put together a more comprehensive article over the weekend.

Just FYI, both transmitters on the spacecraft have been commanded into engineering telemetry mode and we are receiving data.

Snippets, they are trying to act before lunar impact is likely; the spacecraft is not where it was supposed to be but there are no details on by how much or why.

Project website article

We Are Now In Command of the ISEE-3 Spacecraft

Old equipment often lives a long time but in space this is a tribute to great caution and care by the designers and builders. In this case the earth equipment no longer existed so something workable had to be jury rigged. (JR can be enormous fun if it works)

Radiation damage is going on all the time with the electronics, a major problem in space, why the four solar maximum get mentioned.

The next step is wish vast luck there are no major faults in the spacecraft. Power is there so the solar panels have survive micrometeorite damage and surface scouring can’t be too bad. Propellant tanks etc., remains to be seen.

The Talkshop sends wishes so if anyone can help them please do.

Post by Tim