Re: What exactly is missing that requires reverse-engineering?
I'm sure they do have the source code for both the satellite itself and the specialist mission control software.
What they probably don't have is hardware to run the latter on, as all the "active" missions will have been slowly ported to new hardware platforms over the last decade.
The "dead" missions will have been pruned and archived.
So this one will need digging out of cold storage - probably a stack of tapes somewhere - and then porting to the current hardware.
None of that is likely to be particularly complicated for NASA bods, but will need somebody with time to actually do it.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
