Old Dogs - New Tricks: Old spacecraft can still teach us new things.
Channel: Rene Schickbauer
Date: 2014-06-21

ISEE-3... why revive an old spacecraft? Can it really give us more knowledge about our universe with 30+ years old sensors?

Yes, certainly! In this video, i'll talk about how old spacecraft still advance our scientific understanding about the place we live in.

Copyright info: The pictures in this video are taken from Wikipedia.


Transcript:

The Delta 29-14 rocket lifted off of Cape Canaverals Pad 17 B on the 12th of August 1978, nearly exactly a year after the Voyager 2 spacecraft began ITS epic grand tour of the solar system. On top of the rocket was a small, 400kg solar powered probe called the I-S-E-E 3.

It was placed in an orbit that kept it constantly between the earth and the sun - a so called lagrange point - where it did study the sun and how the solar wind affects earths magnetosphere.

After completing its mission in 1982, it was repurposed to fly by two comets, Giacobini-Zinner and Halley. This was a mission it was never designed for, nevertheless, it suceeded and returned valuable science. 

Then, after both flybys where complete, with the spacecraft orbiting the sun, NASA used it to study coronal mass ejections, huge eruptions on the sun.

Finally, in May 1997, 19 years after launch, NASA ended the mission and switched off data transmission from the probe for good - or so they thought.

Then, in early 2014, members of the public started an unprecedented effort: They announced that they could recreate all the required ground control hardware to talk to the space probe once again and put the aging I-S-E-E 3 probe in to it's original orbit to resume its primary mission. To get the required money the group started a crowdfunding campaign and suceeded.

But what can a 30+ years old space probe really tell us? 

Lots, as it turns out. At the moment, we don't have any other spacecraft with a comparable suite of sensors at that point in space.

And that's what really matters. You may have better, more modern instruments that are vastly superior to what ISEE-3 can offer. But if they are not where you need them to be in order to make your observations it wont help you decifer the secrets of the universe - or, as it is in this case, the secrets of the Sun and the earth itself.

Just take a look at the two Voyager probe. They are 37 years old, most of their instruments are switched off because a lack of electrical power and it takes the biggest antennas on earth to recieve their 25 Watt transmissions at a few bytes per second. 

And you know what? Those antennas are quite expensive to operate.

But the fact is, of all the hundreds of satelites, probes, space stations and landers earth has launched over the last 6 decades, only the two Voyagers are out far enough to directly meassure the interstellar wind, particles created by solar wind of stars other than our own sun and gases blown around by supernovas and stuff. It really doesn't matter if the science instruments are old and wouldn't pass inspection on newer spacecraft.

They are the only ones we have out there right now. Of course we could send a much better equiped spaceprobe out there to make much more detailed analyses. And of course, we will.

But that will take time. The Voyagers are pretty much the fastest spacecraft we ever launched and it took them 36 years to reach interstellar space. New probes might not be that much faster. So, by the time THEY get out enough to claim they are going "to where no spaceprobe has gone before", they too will be old and looked upon like things that belong in a museum.

Thanks to "grandfathers" like I-S-E-E and the Voyager probes, we can now ask the right questions and equip our next space probes with the best equipment for the job.

Meanwhile, our museum probes still send us new answers to life, the universe and everything.  And they give us even more questions we don't have answers for.

Not yet, anyway.