Second Mission: International Cometary Explorer
On June 10, 1982, after completing its original mission, ISEE-3 was repurposed. It was renamed the International Cometary Explorer (ICE). The primary scientific objective of ICE was to study the interaction between the solar wind and a cometary atmosphere. After a successful thruster burn to knock it loose from its halo orbit on September 1 of that year, it used the instability of the Earth/Moon and Earth/Sun Lagrange points, making a series of lunar orbits over the next 15 months. Its last and closest pass over the Moon, on December 22, 1983, was a mere 119.4 km above the moon's surface. By the beginning of 1984, ICE was in heliocentric orbit.
Read more about this topic: International Cometary Explorer
Famous quotes containing the word explorer:
“A man’s interest in the world is only the overflow from his interest in himself. When you are a child your vessel is not yet full; so you care for nothing but your own affairs. When you grow up, your vessel overflows; and you are a politician, a philosopher, or an explorer and adventurer. In old age the vessel dries up: there is no overflow: you are a child again.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)