Zombie Spacecraft Resurrected and Returning Home

The ISEE-3 "zombie" spacecraft, which has been lonely and drifting in outer space for nearly 20 years, is finally returning home.

Launched 36 years ago by NASA, ISEE-3 - short for International Sun-Earth Explorer - seemed destined to pass by Earth without any sort of fanfare, except for a slim chance of crashing into the Moon, or possibly loop aimlessly through the inner solar system over and over, according to the Utah People's Post.

Now it has come back from the dead and seems to be in good working order. As it nears Earth, expected to arrive in August, experts will have their best opportunity to redirect it on another mission. Though, the '70s-era technology used to communicate with it was scrapped long ago, so the biggest challenge is figuring out how to command the craft. No one has the full operating manual anymore, and the fragments are inconsistent at times.

"We call ourselves techno-archaeologists," Dennis Wingo, an engineer and founder of the company Skycorp, told The New York Times.

The race to revive ISEE-3 began in April using the Arecibo Observatory radio telescope in Puerto Rico, when experts first made contact with it.

At first, NASA, thought that recovering the zombie craft was more trouble than it was worth, but space enthusiasts persisted, arguing that it could be used to train future scientists and engineers.

"Not only is it not impossible," Wingo said, "I think it can work, and I know how to do it."

Wingo and 20 other individuals from all over the United States joined the effort, including numerous members of the original ISEE-3 group. Through RocketHub, a crowdfunding website, they asked for $125,000 to help pay costs for the flyby. They ended up collecting almost $160,000 from just 2,238 donors. They signed an agreement with NASA, and now Skycorp has taken over the project, the Utah People's Post reported.

Wingo has now persuaded NASA to use the Deep Space Network to identify ISEE-3's trajectory, to calculate the rocket burn required to put it on a path to Earth orbit.

If everything goes as planned, the zombie spaceship may return home after nearly 20 years of drifting out in space and will hopefully return to its original location.