A few days ago, I was reading the wikipedia entry for the International Cometary Explorer (ICE) / International Sun-Earth Explorer 3 (ISEE-3) satellite, that was launched August 12, 1978. Down near the bottom of the page it states:
On February 4, 2014, the Goddard Space Flight Center announced that the Deep Space Network equipment necessary to transmit signals to the spacecraft had been decommissioned in 1999, and that replacing it was not economically feasible
Does anyone know what equipment it was that was decommissioned leaving us unable to contact the spacecraft? Also on that note what would it take to contact ICE/ISEE-3 or any spacecraft at a distance of ~1AU? Would it be possible to contact ICE/ISEE-3 on a 10-meter dish? 5-meter dish?