Hat tip, SFist: Space Nerds Launch McMoon's, A Control Center In A Defunct McDonald's To Hijack A Decommissioned NASA Satellite

Civilians in Abandoned McDonald’s Seize Control of Wandering Space Satellite

By Jack Smith IV 8/08 2:38pm

For the first time in history, an independent crew is taking control of a NASA satellite and running a crowdfunded mission. They’re doing it all from a makeshift mission control center in an abandoned McDonald’s in Mountain View, California, using old radio parts from eBay and a salvaged flat screen TV.
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{Keith} Cowing is a former NASA employee, and now runs a handful of space news sites, like NASA Watch and SpaceRef. Sitting out in the desert one night after a documentary shoot, Mr. Cowing asked Bob Farquhar, an old NASA researcher who worked with the ISEE-3 in its glory days, what it would take to bring the satellite out of retirement.
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To start, they needed space for their control center. The neighborhood near Ames Research Center in Mountain View, once a teeming hub of activity in the days of the space race, had become a shell of its former self. ... “There were a few abandoned buildings—one was a barbershop, and one was an abandoned McDonald’s,” Mr. Cowing said. “Someone hit the barbershop with a truck, so we took the McDonald’s.”

Their new control center, dubbed “McMoon’s,” fit all of the criteria they needed: the doors locked, and it was free. For their console, they pulled a broken flatscreen TV from a government dumpster and fixed the power supply. The other pieces are from eBay, including a Mac laptop and some radio parts.