diff --git a/CHANGES b/CHANGES
index 0c5c00eb72..3ad957837a 100644
--- a/CHANGES
+++ b/CHANGES
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 0.3.1.dev
 ---------
 
-- None yet
+- Fix NASA ADS, which had an internal syntax error (#602)
 
 0.3.0 (2015-10-26)
 ------------------
diff --git a/astroquery/nasa_ads/core.py b/astroquery/nasa_ads/core.py
index 744f9127f0..a03b09ca71 100644
--- a/astroquery/nasa_ads/core.py
+++ b/astroquery/nasa_ads/core.py
@@ -34,14 +34,19 @@ class ADSClass(BaseQuery):
 
     def __init__(self, *args):
         """ set some parameters """
-        pass
+        super(ADSClass, self).__init__()
 
     @class_or_instance
-    def query_simple(self, query_string, get_query_payload=False, get_raw_response=False):
-        self.query_string = query_string
+    def query_simple(self, query_string, get_query_payload=False,
+                     get_raw_response=False, cache=True):
+        """
+        Basic query.  Uses a string and the ADS generic query.
+        """
         request_payload = self._args_to_payload(query_string)
 
-        response = commons.send_request(self.QUERY_SIMPLE_URL, request_payload, self.TIMEOUT)
+        response = self._request(method='POST', url=self.QUERY_SIMPLE_URL,
+                                 data=request_payload, timeout=self.TIMEOUT,
+                                 cache=cache)
 
         # primarily for debug purposes, but also useful if you want to send
         # someone a URL linking directly to the data
@@ -50,12 +55,15 @@ def query_simple(self, query_string, get_query_payload=False, get_raw_response=F
         if get_raw_response:
             return response
         # parse the XML response into AstroPy Table
-        resulttable = self._parse_response(response.encode(results.encoding).decode('utf-8'))
+        resulttable = self._parse_response(response)
 
         return resulttable
 
     def _parse_response(self, response):
-        xmlrepr = minidom.parseString(response.text)
+
+        encoded_content = response.text.encode(response.encoding)
+
+        xmlrepr = minidom.parseString(encoded_content)
         # Check if there are any results!
 
         # get the list of hits