NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Explorer (WIRE), an orbiting observatory, was considered a total loss because its telescope was damaged shortly after the spacecraft's launch in March. But Derek Buzasi, a scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, had a different idea.

He has been gathering scientific data with WIRE's "star camera," a far smaller telescope whose original purpose was to keep the spacecraft pointed in the correct direction. Buzasi has used the camera to observe the star Alpha Ursae Majoris, for the first time recording how the star's brightness changes because of internal vibrations. Such vibrations are known as starquakes.

Buzasi and colleagues have access to the star camera through October. After that, NASA may use the spacecraft to conduct engineering tests.