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Photos: Reconnecting with an old friend who needed space

Retired NASA engineer Bob Farquhar hangs up after a telephone conference with other members of the ISEE-3 reboot team. The group hopes to take control of a retired NASA space probe, ending its journey around the sun and returning it to Earth orbit.

Retired NASA engineer Bob Farquhar hangs up after a telephone conference with other members of the ISEE-3 reboot team. The group hopes to take control of a retired NASA space probe, ending its journey around the sun and returning it to Earth orbit.  (Monte Morin / Los Angeles Times)

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After years of lobbying NASA, a former Army paratrooper with a Stanford PhD and a group of self-described space cowboys have won permission to be the first privately organized group to take control of a retired government satellite and change its orbit.

Reconnecting with an old friend who needed space

An artist’s concept shows the International Sun-Earth Explorer, sent into a wide orbit in 1981 in search of comets. Today NASA has written it off as dead, but now that it is nearing Earth once more, some scientists want to return it to its original job.

  (NASA / AFP/Getty Images)

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