Three months ago I wrote about The 8-Track of Space Craft. The ISEE-3 spacecraft was launched in 1978 and is returning to earth but we no longer have the equipment to even communicate with it let alone rescue it.
And now Spaceref writes , Ettus Research Expertise Helps Rescue An Aging Satellite For Science
"ISEE-3 will be returning to Earth orbit in August of this year after having circled the sun for nearly four decades. SpaceRef Interactive, Skycorp, and Space College have joined forces to rescue the spacecraft, put it back into orbit near Earth, and use it for scientific research and STEM education."
"Skycorp's CEO Dennis Wingo said "NASA does not have the old hardware to talk to the spacecraft anymore. A device akin to an old dialup modem is needed. Since the schedule to do this is so short, using a traditional development approach is impossible. With the continuing advances in technology for software-defined radios what was once impossible is now merely difficult. Shortly after meeting the Ettus Research team they managed to put something together in days that would have taken months to do just a few years ago. This led us to chose Ettus Research to lead the development of the software radio we needed. Without the expertise, cooperative spirit, and a can-do attitude of the Ettus team this task would have been far more difficult - if not impossible.""
No comments:
Post a Comment