SatSig topic:

ISEE-3 Reboot recovery : A nice story indeed

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Jun 15^th, 2014 at 3:37pm

Zombie ship coming back home from space graveyard

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/15/science/space/calling-back-a-zombie-ship-from...
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Jul 19^th, 2014 at 10:09pm

..and the story, said to be finished on July 9, still goes on!
Read on here:

https://www.themarysue.com/isee3-satellite-engines-fire/

Go, zombie, go!

telemetry is here: https://isee3.p3s.nl/

almost-live news: https://twitter.com/ISEE3Reboot

Stay tuned Wink

Jul 19^th, 2014 at 10:45pm

Many thanks Alphaco for telling us about this.
Well done to all concerned. Any idea what antenna they are using ?

Best regards, Eric

Jul 19^th, 2014 at 11:41pm

The ISEE-3 Reboot team in the defunct McDonald's (now called McMoon's) uses a link to Arecibo, where voluntary Arecibo staff manually switch a amsat-DL (German sat radio hams)-built power amplifier on and off.

Details here: https://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs/2014/how-to-transmit-to-isee-3.html

Receive signal is now something beyond 32dB signal to noise in Arecibo, and the guy who posted the FFT display uses just a one meter grid dish looking much like the cheapo Wifi link gear.

Another guy uses some other junk: twitter.com/PA4DAN/status/489031930466537472/photo/1

see also: https://twitter.com/uhf_satcom/status/490590289581850625

Maybe you have a big enough dish, 2.4GHz LNA and an analyzer to see it yourself (soon), but I don't have coordinates to point to.
update: yes i have them: here they are - don't ask me how to read these for the moment: https://spacecollege.org/isee3/updated-ephemeris-for-isee-3-at-jpl-horizons.html

...Since I read this topic first a few days ago, I found today that I was light-years behind already

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Jul 20^th, 2014 at 7:25am

An orbit diagram (pause the video at the end to have a more precise view): https://www.space.com/25704-probe-launched-in-1978-coming-close-to-home-but-we-c...

I have to grab that Amsat-downconverter of mine, one of my 90cm dishes and the 4-turn helix and try to trim the LO, or see if it has any useful gain at 2.2GHz, because we could still just have a Earth fly-by and nothing else.

Aug 11^th, 2014 at 7:40am

My 2.4GHz downconverter mods having failed (no suitable quartz available in time, and I now have the thing in a state where it needs a good analyzer to trim it back to where it was, if at all worth it, 2.4 GHz being too much used by Wifi, Microwave ovens, etc.
Meanwhile ISEE-3 has flown past Earth and Moon, and lacking nitrogen pressure in the relatively full fuel tanks, no trajectory correction manoeuver could be done, so it is off for another 15-year ride around the sun.

See here https://spacecraftforall.com/ - a nice animated website about the craft (no Chrome install needed, really), and here: https://twitter.com/ISEE3Reboot for current status.

Thanks to Paul Marsh and others on the ICR #hearsat channel for all the advice. I'll be "more ready" for the next signals, hopefully.
I'll go back to my 1.8m TVro sat dishes for UK expats for the moment.