ISEE-3 (ICE) Revisits Earth

  • Released Monday, April 14, 2014
  • Updated Thursday, January 8, 2015 at 2:01PM
  • ID: 4161

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.


Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio


Datasets used in this visualization

DE421 (A.K.A. JPL DE421)
Ephemeris | NASA/JPL
JPL/Horizon Orbital Ephemerides
Ephemeris | NASA/JPL

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.


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