

An independent crew is taking control of a NASA satellite - nkurz
http://betabeat.com/2014/08/civilians-in-abandoned-mcdonalds-seize-control-of-wandering-space-satellite

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mturmon
There are so many half truths and lies in this story. I wanted to mention just
this one:

"Until now, when NASA wanted to conduct research, they’d collect data and
disappear with it for a few months before publishing. But the data from ISEE-3
is going to be available to anyone who wants access to it."

This is grotesquely wrong.

Plenty of space weather data is available in near real time form, as soon as
it is received by ground stations. E.g., for relevant imagery,
[http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/](http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/), but many
other space weather sources are available. The time stamps on the images at
the above link should be only a few hours old. Those are quick look products
(jpegs), but the science formats are also available, for free.

Significant Earth science data ([https://earthdata.nasa.gov/data/near-real-
time-data/rapid-re...](https://earthdata.nasa.gov/data/near-real-time-
data/rapid-response/about-rapid-response)) are also available free, within
hours of receipt, for anyone, including disaster responders.

Other data is broadcast directly, with open formats, so any ground station
underneath can receive it directly. ("Direct Broadcast,"
[http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=565052...](http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=5650520&url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fxpls%2Fabs_all.jsp%3Farnumber%3D5650520)).

The people involved in these programs have spent a lot of effort in engaging
disaster responders ([http://www.nasa.gov/applied-
sciences/disasters.html#.U-hc5WK...](http://www.nasa.gov/applied-
sciences/disasters.html#.U-hc5WK9KSM)) to make end to end data services that
will actually be useful.

Sure, there are other disciplines in which space data are sat on by the PI --
planetary missions, cosmology. The reason is that the data is not well
understood and there would be too many bogus results. But even, say, for Mars
data, there has been a lot of outreach to make sure both US and international
scientists can be part of the team and share in initial results. This slower
timeline is special to these disciplines. The article is making a broad
statement that is not true.

~~~
humbert
The team is making space science and technologies accessible and
understandable to a wider technical public audience than any previous project.
That's the key point that the article tries unsuccessfully to relay. The team
calls this "citizen [space] science" in their Education and Public Outreach
post. [http://spacecollege.org/isee3/education-and-public-
outreach-...](http://spacecollege.org/isee3/education-and-public-outreach-
lunar-orbiter-and-isee-3.html) "Imagine what feats of exploration might be
possible if an empowered and engaged citizenry realized that exploring space
is really something anyone can do."

------
sebcat
This article made me think about Travis Goodspeed and his "southern
appalachian space agency". If you are interested in real DIY-space stuff, you
should check it out.

------
ForHackernews
I thought they'd discovered there wasn't any propellant left in the
spacecraft?

~~~
sosuke
Looks like you're right, but it still will be able to collect and send some
kind of data in a solar orbit. [http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/08/crowd-
funded-isee-3-r...](http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/08/crowd-funded-
isee-3-reboot-mission-to-begin-sunday-after-lunar-flyby/)

------
nospecinterests
This article is starting to bug me.

First, the author makes the claim that the team was given the McDonalds for
use for this particular mission but that, as far as I know, is false. They
have had the space for some time while they were restoring lunar orbiter
images.

Second, the team's/company's news updates show that they had to buy more
equipment than an old radio, a mac laptop and some parts to fix a broken tv,
specifically, a software defined radio (sdr).

~~~
humbert
The team bought the old McDonalds for use as a hackerspace, and also to
prevent it from being torn down.

Their $159,602 crowdfunding on
[http://www.rockethub.com/42228](http://www.rockethub.com/42228) paid for
necessary equipment and services, the most expensive being access to large
radiotelescopes to transmit commands and receive telemetry.

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trackofalljades
Do we really need the reddit headline editorialization on HN?

When you're working with NASA, and they officially help you with the
encryption, you're not "seizing" anything. This is a very cool and interesting
story without the L33T HAXX0R DUD3Z angle being weirdly inserted into it...the
McMoon team are heroes many times over and awesome in their own right.

~~~
forgotpasswd3x
It's the EXACT headline from the article! Maybe HN should penalize people for
complaining about the titles of submissions, because it seems like no matter
how someone titles their submission, _someone_ is going to have a problem with
it. Complaining about "headline editorialization" doesn't do anything to fix
the problem.

Downvote and move on. We don't need to have this stupid conversation every
time.

~~~
dang
The HN guidelines call for using the original title except when it is
misleading or linkbait. trackofalljades is right that this one was linkbait,
so we changed it to a phrase from the first sentence.

You're also right—complaints about titles are tedious. It astonishes me how
much time and energy they take up.

There is a way to complain about titles productively, though: suggest a better
one.

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frozenport
Hasn't this been going on for a while?

