Private group acquires rights to orbiting vintage NASA spacecraft

Guardian : For the first time ever, NASA has decided to turn over a decommissioned spacecraft to a private group. The International Sun/Earth Explorer-3 was launched in 1978 and operated until 1997, when NASA deactivated it. Among the craft’s missions was the study of the solar wind and its interaction with Earth’s magnetic field. Still in orbit around the Sun, the probe will swing by Earth later this year. It has been in sleep mode since being switched off, but its radio transmitters were accidentally left on. Because it is believed to still have fuel and working scientific instruments, a group of citizen scientists decided to try to crowdsource the $125 000 needed to reboot it and allow it to continue working. The group is currently gathering equipment from the 1970s in order to communicate with the vintage craft, and plans to share the data it gathers with both the public and the scientific community.