A spacecraft that has reportedly spent over 3 and a half decades in space is finally heading home. The New York Times reports that the International Sun Earth Explorer-3 or ISEE-3 has finally been contacted by a team of civilians.

Launched by NASA way back in 1978, during the presidency of Jimmy Carter, "the craft orbited the sun between the sun and the Earth, allowing scientists to observe for the first time the high-speed stream of electrons and protons known as the solar wind before it reached Earth," says the New York Times.

The ISEE-3's other missions include a trip to see Comet Giacobini-Zinnerin up close in September 1985 and interplanetary space observations before NASA finally retired the spacecraft in 1997, notes the New York Times. Since then, the spaceship has reportedly been floating around the sun. But in 2 months, on August 2014, it will "catch up to and pass Earth," adds the outlet.

Robert W. Farquhar, the craft's flight director proposed that a space shuttle could be used to bring back the now zombie spaceship home. But in 1999, two years after the spacecraft was made to retire, NASA conducted a Deep Space Network update which meant disposing old transmitters that could communicate with the ISEE-3.

Facebook page ISEE3returns, a page dedicated to bring back the ancient spacecraft back to Earth, said that achieving the goal was rather bleak. A post on the page recalls, "The transmitters of the Deep Space Network, the hardware to send signals out to the fleet of NASA spacecraft in deep space, no longer includes the equipment needed to talk to ISEE-3. These old-fashioned transmitters were removed in 1999."

The post continues, "Could new transmitters be built? Yes, but it would be at a price no one is willing to spend. And we need to use the DSN because no other network of antennas in the US has the sensitivity to detect and transmit signals to the spacecraft at such a distance. This effort has always been risky with a low probability of success and a near-zero budget."

But now, budget is nowhere near-zero as 2,238 donors have all chipped in to raise $160,000 on Rocket Hub, a crowd-funding site. The project, initiated by Dennis Wingo and Keith Crowing, explains:

"Our plan is simple: we intend to contact the ISEE-3 (International Sun-Earth Explorer) spacecraft, command it to fire its engines and enter an orbit near Earth, and then resume its original mission - a mission it began in 1978. ISEE-3 was rechristened as the International Comet Explorer (ICE). If we are successful it may also still be able to chase yet another comet."

According to the project description, SkyCorp and SpaceRef Interactive will be leading the venture while "education and public outreach will be coordinated by the newly-formed non-profit organization Space College Foundation," reads the page.

Wingo and his team also flipped what was thought of as a goal with "a low probability of success" by making contact with the ISEE-3 at the end of May. The New York Times reports that via the "Arecibo Observatory radio telescope in Puerto Rico, the team succeeded in talking to the spacecraft."

The team is reportedly looking to "fire the engines within weeks," says the outlet.