ICE/ISEE-3 to return to an Earth no longer capable of speaking to it

[apelly]

Just saw this thought provoking article: http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2014/02070836-isee-3.html

I've periodically reported on the status of the International Sun-Earth Explorer (ISEE-3), a spacecraft that was launched in 1978 to study Earth's magnetosphere and repurposed in 1983 to study two comets. Renamed the International Cometary Explorer (ICE), it has been in a heliocentric orbit since then, traveling just slightly faster than Earth. It's finally catching up to us from behind, and will return to Earth in August. It's still functioning, broadcasting a carrier signal that the Deep Space Network successfully detected in 2008. Twelve of its 13 instruments were working when we last checked on its condition, sometime prior to 1999.
...

Oddly even most of the comments seem interesting.