Today, starting at approximately 12:30 p.m. Eastern Time, a small band of civilian scientists will try a second time to adjust the trajectory of a space probe abandoned to the sun 17 years ago.

The first set of new commands sent to the International Sun-Earth Explorer-3, or ISEE-3, were apparently received and succeeded in getting the long-hibernating craft to begin firing a series of thruster bursts designed to move it from its orbit around the sun to an orbit around Earth.

But then, according to project leaders, the thrusters failed to fire properly. So, another attempt will be initiated today in what is the first-ever effort to reconnect with and take command of a craft previously operated by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

The ISEE-3 is still about three million miles away, but is closing in quickly on Earth's neck of the solar system and will sail quite close to the moon in August.

If the rescue effort goes as planned, the project team will be able to instruct the probe -- one of the first instruments used to study the ongoing ejection of highly-charged particles from the sun -- to pass close enough to the moon so that the gravitational pull of our planet's only natural satellite will slingshot the ISEE-3 into orbit around Earth, where it will, presumably, be ready for a new set of directions.

The Non-Reimbursable Space Act Agreement signed between NASA and Skycorp, Inc., of Los Gatos, California, allows the private company to try to contact, command and control, NASA's International Sun-Earth Explorer-3 (ISEE-3) spacecraft as part of the company's ISEE-3 Reboot Project, which ultimately seeks to resume the probe's original mission.

Launched in 1978 to study the constant flow of solar wind streaming from the sun to Earth, ISEE-3 completed its prime mission in 1981, after which, since it had still had some remaining fuel and functioning instruments, it was re-named the International Comet Explorer and directed to observe two comets.

After the successful completion of its secondary mission, the craft was left orbiting the sun and, in 1997, was ordered to shut down, NASA records show.

Two years later, the space agency reportedly trashed all of the hardware able to communicate with ISEE-3.

In 2008, the international Deep Space Network made contact with the probe and discovered it was still operational -- which sparked interest from the space exploration community in trying to resurrect what for years was assumed a long-lost mission.

NASA decided against funding such a recovery, but was open to the possibility of coordinating with a second-party recovery effort, such as the initiative led by Keith Cowing, editor in chief of the website NASA Watch, and Dennis Wingo, an engineer and the entrepreneurial force behind Skycorp.

After a crowdfunding campaign raised nearly $160,000 for the recovery effort and the group re-established communication with the dormant spacecraft in May, NASA offered time on its Deep Space Network of radio telescopes in order for the project specialists to fine-tune measurements of the spacecraft's heading.

Many of the scientific instruments on the probe are reportedly still working and about a week ago, the thrusters fired 11 pulses to slightly increase the spin of the craft.

Now, the ISEE-3 needs to initiate more than 400 added pulses to direct it close to the moon, without running into it.

Skycorp operates out of an old McDonald's restaurant, near San Jose, California where project volunteers work on laptops that send commands to the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, from which signals are beamed to the probe.