Born in Chicago in 1932, Robert Fakour received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1969, where he successfully joined NASA.
Robert worked at NASA for 23 years, participating in many space exploration projects such as comets, Mercury, and Pluto. Robert's magic brain always has countless whimsical ideas, and what he is best at is satellite orbit design, which can send satellites anywhere they want to send, so everyone affectionately calls him "space cowboy".
In 1978, NASA launched a satellite called the International Day-Earth Exploration Satellite-3 (abbreviated Isee-3), which is mainly used to detect the solar wind, and the leading project is Robert. ISEE-3 was launched into an orbit called "Halo" at the L1 Lagrange point between the Earth and the Sun, where isee-3 was offset by the gravitational pull of the Sun and the Earth and could run relatively stationary without much fuel, which was the first satellite in human history to be sent to the L1 Lagrange point, and the person who calculated this "halo" orbit was Robert.
Isee-3 is coming to an end after 5 years of observing the Sun. At that time, astronautic scientists around the world were busy with one thing: Halley's Comet, the famous comet that was about to return to Earth in 1986.
One day, Robert had a whim, isn't the i S E E-3 already done? It's better to just let it change its orbit and fly directly to explore Halley's Comet. As a result, ISEE-3 was officially renamed ice, and Robert calculated a complex orbit: first let ise-3 return to Earth, orbit n circles, and then use the gravitational acceleration of the moon to catch up with the comet.
Combined with Robert's precision calculations and modern technology, he succeeded! In September 1985, ice crossed and detected a comet called Giacombine Zinner; a year later, it accurately crossed the tails of two comets and successfully detected Halley's Comet. In this way, ice not only became the first probe in the history of space to detect the tail of a comet, but also the first probe to detect the tails of two different comets twice. Robert won the victory with a satellite that was nearly decommissioned.
However, many scientists who counted on Isee-3 to continue observing the sun wrote articles attacking him, saying that Robert had "stolen their satellite." Robert responded, "That's not called stealing, it's borrowing." Because after the satellite completed its exploration of the comet, Robert set an orbit for ICE to return to Earth 31 years later, in 2014.
In 1997, NASA stopped running the ISEE project, and isee-3 "disappeared" in the vast starry sky. However, Robert never gave up. Years after his disappearance, in 2008, Robert successfully made another location link to ise-3, which was orbiting the sun.
In 2004, a group of scientists who had worked with Robert came up with the idea of re-establishing contact with ICE when ICE returned in 2014, activating the spacecraft engine, and then sending the satellite back to the Earth-Day Lagrange point, and returning the "thing" to its original place. In May 2014, a private team of retired NASA experts, engineers, and programmers, including Robert, was formally formed, who used modern instruments to build the ancient communication and contact methods of the year, and found the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico to try to exchange "signals" to i s e e-3 through radio amplifiers on radio telescopes. After several weeks of hard work, team members checked for signs of the ise-3's tenacious life and tried to move it to a new track. At this point, Robert, 82, is convinced that his "child" can return.
Watching their efforts, the team signed an unprecedented "no-reimbursement agreement" with them, allowing the team to use the decommissioned space equipment, the first time a non-governmental private organization had full control of a large satellite. This time, however, the rescue operation was unsuccessful. The nitrogen boost system on isee-3 could not provide enough pressure to the propulsion system, which meant that it could not ignite and the satellite could not change orbit.
On August 10, 2014, as Robert calculated 31 years ago, the ISEE-3 "passed" by Mother Earth after 31 years and billions of kilometers.
On October 18, 2015, "Space Cowboy" Robert died of illness at the age of 83. Twitter, which has an "isee-3" page, sent a message: Thank you for bringing me back to Earth. I'll always be there, on the track you set for me.
Perhaps in the next return year, ISEE-3 will return to Earth.
"Knowledge Window" magazine author: Dai Yongming