ISEE-3 (ICE) Revisits Earth
ISEE-3 (International Sun-Earth Explorer) was a mission launched in 1978 and was the first spacecraft to orbit the Earth-Sun L1 (Wikipedia: Lagrange) point.
Its primary mission complete, it was renamed the International Cometary Explorer (ICE) and its orbit was altered to measure the electrodynamic environments of comets Giacobini-Zinner and Halley (Wikipedia). It subsequently entered a solar orbit which sent it inside and outside the orbit of the Earth.
In mid-2014, its current orbit will have ICE pass close to the Earth.
Top-down view of the orbit of ISEE-3(ICE) relative to the inner solar system. We see the orbit alternates with the spacecraft occasionally closer, then further from the Sun that Earth.
An oblique view of the orbit of ISEE-3(ICE) relative to the inner planets. Close-up view of the Earth flyby in mid-2014.
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio
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Animator
- Tom Bridgman (Global Science and Technology, Inc.)
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Producer
- Genna Duberstein (USRA)
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Project support
- Laurence Schuler (ADNET Systems, Inc.)
- Ian Jones (ADNET Systems, Inc.)
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Writer
- Karen Fox (ADNET Systems, Inc.)
Release date
This page was originally published on Monday, April 14, 2014.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 1:51 PM EDT.
Datasets used in this visualization
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JPL/Horizon Orbital Ephemerides
ID: 597Planetary ephemerides
This dataset can be found at: http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/?horizons
See all pages that use this dataset -
DE421 (JPL DE421)
ID: 752Planetary ephemerides
This dataset can be found at: http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/?ephemerides#planets
See all pages that use this dataset
Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.