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Pioneer 10 Finally Dead After 28 Years?
BorgiaPope writes: "Jill Tarter of the SETI Institute's Project Phoenix writes a sad, elegiac piece in Slate about the apparent final silence of Pioneer 10, launched in 1972 and now more than 7 billion miles from Earth. For the past five years, SETI scientists at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico have used the incredibly faint signals from Pioneer 10 to test the functionality of their noise filtering gear. Alas, Tarter reports that Pioneer 10 hasn't been heard from for several days now. The incredibly hardy, long-lived satellite, which long ago surpassed NASA's wildest expectations for its power supplies and other systems, may finally have drifted peacefully into eternal slumber . . . ." I think the Klingons got it.
Back in the seventies Nasa made beautiful, functional and sturdy spacecraft which would work for many years without fail.
These days we get probes that are so blind that they crash into planets.
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Any product which fails after 49 days is rubbish. How can an Operating System be User-friendly which dies after 49 days? It is pretty ridiculous state of affairs. Yeah! There are problems with all software, the point is they are fixed BEFORE they are released. Surely Win '98 testing period lasted more than 49 days!
Would you buy a car which was doomed to crash after 49 days, so long as the manufacture provided a patch for it?
Something that crashes after 49 days is embarassing, no matter who did it. Sure, bring up the point about RedHat. Its embarassing for Redhat too. It makes NO difference except perclating your vain pride in a crappy software.
So have humans, accept it and move on :-)
...and you think you've got uptime!
Seriously, it's a testament to the engineering skill of the people who built, launched and operated this particular piece of machinery. Amazing work!
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
...unless it chanced upon a stray wormhole...
You're using her as bait, Master!
...yep, there's humanity's legacy...free porn!
You're using her as bait, Master!
Q: What does the starship Enterprise and toilet paper have in common?
A: They both circle uranus, fighting to wipe out klingons!
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CitizenC
In this day and age of super computers, composite materials, and nano-technology, we can't even get our Shuttles to take off on their first scheduled date greater than 1/2 the time, and when they do, they inevitably have something go wrong (as this shuttle mission has).
To think that the guys that put Pioneer 10 into space were probably still using slide-rulers and those $500 pocket calculators that could only add, subtract, multiply and divide, and they built a space probe that crossed over 7 BILLION miles and ran for 28 YEARS is pretty amazing. Even if it never DID anything.
When was the last time you bought a vehicle that went 7,000,000,000 miles without a tune up? Or for that matter, what was the last piece of technology you bought that is still operating EVERY SINGLE DAY even after 28 years?
I have a Mitsubishi 52" TV built in 1982 and every day when I turn it on, I'm amazed to see it still function properly. It didn't cost quite as much as Pioneer 10, but it sure seemed like it did!
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
They don't make 'em like they used to.
âoeIn theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not." â Albert Einstein
It's a bloody shame, but to all good things comes an end.
Mark
Mark
- if you love something, set it free; if it doesn't come back, hunt it down and kill it
It is something like 10,000 years or more until it gets close enough to another star for that to be an issue.
The cake is a pie
If I had moderator points, I'd kick this one up...
heh
humans are hardware. I tore up a tissue the other day and thought it was a lovely end for it. It looked very happy sitting in the trash can.
-Erik
Pioneer 10 Instruments
Helium Vector Magnetometer (F)
Plasma Analyzer (P/L)
Charged Particle Instrument
Cosmic Ray Telescope
Geiger Tube Telescope
Trapped Radiation Detector (P/L)
Meteoroid Detector (ENC)(F)
Asteroid-Meteoroid Experiment (ENC)(F)
Ultraviolet Photometer
Imaging Photopolarimeter (ENC) (P/L)
Infrared Radiometer (F)
(this info comes from here, which also has info on it's brother pioneer 11, which died in Dec '95)
Can't we send an other probe, inside one of those magnetic bubles, to find it.
Mark
Mark
- if you love something, set it free; if it doesn't come back, hunt it down and kill it
Eh, it will probably be covered up by some other planet's government in a Roswell-like incident.
I think you mean 10 to 20 billion miles from the sun.
The cake is a pie
Damn, I've been doing something wrong then ...
it's in my head
Naawww.... since it is running Win98, they must've upgraded several times. the only problem is that they tried to upgrade to WinME, but alas, it's only a 16-bit processor...
(anyway, the parent was funny to any *nix fans, i think you got hit by the non linux zealot moderators)
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dd if=/dev/random of=~/.ssh/authorized_keys bs=1 count=1024
Was pioneer 10 the thing the klingons destryed in Star Trek 5? Why was a bird of prey so close to Earth? (STV ~ 2290, about 320 years at 7billion miles/28 years, or 250,000,000 mile a year, 80 billion miles, or about 0.01 light years.
It fell into a quantum plot hole, and re-appeared in the delta quadrant.
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Clear, Dark Skies
Yep there's humanity's legacy permanantly engraved, outlasting us by countless millenia...free nude pics!
You're using her as bait, Master!
Because 99.99999% of it's users shut it down each night when they go to bed? Nobody CARES if the OS stays up for more than 49 days or not. We run Linux on most servers at work, NT on the workstations and I run Win98SE at home. Crashing is not a problem on ANY of these OS's. I can't understand how people have the energy to talk about it over and over and over and OVER again. I'm *MUCH* more interested in what kind of applications are avaiable and what I can do with those (or our clients). User friendliness has NOTHING to do with if the OS stays up for 49 days or not - for a server sure, but not for a client OS.
And it has absolutely nothing at all to do with a space probe.
Would you buy a car which was doomed to crash after 49 days, so long as the manufacture provided a patch for it?
If the car ran for 49 CONSECUTIVE DAYS without turning off the engine, I wouldn't care if it would crash after that. I - myself - only run for about 48 hours straight and after that I can shut off my computer. In any case, you're comparing apples to oranges.
Great idea! Charlie Brown, or probably Linus in particular would be a great mascot for Linux. The Penguin is a good mascot, but Linus more PRECISELY captures the child like innocence, and trust, that GNU/Linux has brought back to computing.
From the NASA Website:
s /pioneer/PNimgs/Plaque.gif
"
We expect Pioneer to last an indeterminate period of time, probably outlasting its home planet, the Earth. In 5 billion years, the Sun will become a red giant, expand, envelop the orbit of the Earth, and consume it. Pioneer will still be out there in interstellar space. Erosional processes in the interstellar environment are largely unknown, but are very likely less efficient than erosion within the solar system, where a characteristic erosion rate, due largely to micrometeoritic pitting, is of the order of 1 Angstrom/yr. Thus a plate etched to a depth ~ 0.01 cm should survive recognizable at least to as distance ~ 10 parsecs, and most probably to 100 parsecs. Accordingly, Pioneer 10 and any etched metal message aboard it are likely to survive for much longer periods than any of the works of Man on Earth.
"
A picture of the plaque:
http://spaceprojects.arc.nasa.gov/Space_Project
That made me think, I hope you share the experience.
Defraggle
Head monkey
Dynamic League of discord POEE Cabal "Monkey"
. Surely we don't want the first men on Mars to plant the red flag of communism on such a brave new world?
Actually I wouldn't prefer an American flag of Capitalism planted there either. =) A UN flag or something would be nice though.
I hope that this is just a glitch or some temporary condition.
Perhaps we should try sending someone to reboot it?
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Probably. But that doesn't mean it had to reach 25000mph to leave Earth. If something has no method of self-propulsion along the way, then it must reach "escape velocity" to leave earth. But with propulsion, you can leave earth without exceeding 10mph.
A bullet might need to be fired at escape velocity to leave, but something being pushed all the way up doesn't.
You know if the theories hold out we may not have to worry about chasing down pioneer. Space is curved.
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Normally, NASA immediately hands-over hardware to the Smithsonian at the end of it's life. This certainly applied throughout Apollo where (I believe) the material at the lunar landing sites for A11, 12, 14, 15, 16 & 17 are already the property of the Smithsonian... They just have to go pick 'em up :-)
Note that since the Smithsonian is a federal entity as is NASA, ownership of hardware remains with the Government at all times.
I'd imagine that deep-space probes would follow this precedent; I certainly can't see the US Government allowing private individuals/companies or foreign nation states to just wade on in and pick 'em up and sell to the highest bidder...
On the other hand, any state/company/individual with the ability to do so would possibly not give a fig what the US Government says anyway...
Oh, and about the astronomical distances... In space, distance is easy, it's a function of how long you can be bothered to wait. It's astronomical *velocities* we ought to be celebrating...
--
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy
Your reaction to something which has a less than stellar performance is the re-define the criteria in which to consider it a success. Where as those who believe in Linux insist on higher stands, when faced with failure, your attitide is to LOWER your standards till you reach a level, and assert disinterest, by which you can define ANYTHING as a success.
If you really do not care about the issue so much then why do you bother to argue or paticipate in an argument? It is acceptable to be ignorant about an issue but to declaim your disinterest and ignorance about the issue so loudly is another matter.
User friendliness DOES have something to do with the workmanship of a product. If a product takes that much more effort to stay up, ESPECIALLY beyond the extent to which it is required, then it will DEFINITELY take the effort to excel in areas that is required. Failure in this area affects the availability of applications, once they are running.
Is the FAILURE of an OS, beyond a certain time duration:
(a) a request of Users?
(b) a FALSE generalisation by yourself to paclate your ZEALOUSNESS for mediocre software?
(c) an escape clause for people who develop mediocre software?
Ask yourself whose interest does it serve? Who profits from this upper limit?
If someone was about to set out on a journey, which was only going to be 10000 miles. He had no plans to travel any further than that. What do you think he would buy? A car which travels 10000 miles then stops permanently, or one which travels 20000 miles (and cast less than the former one)?
"Nobody CARES if the OS stays up for more than 49 days or not."
Do not shout your ignorance so loudly.
Reading such an article I feel close like we've lost a man. This one is older than me. Dead now.
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Every secretary using MSWord wastes enough resources
Nope, Klingons are correct. Remember Star Trek V? I do, despite my attempts to forget it. But anyway. At the beginning of ST5, the Klingon ship destroyed Pioneer 10, although they considered it 'space junk'.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
God, I feel microscopic
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
ROTFL!
That would have been funny if I didn't think you were so serious!
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
I'd really like to know what other machines have long lifetimes. Apparently ships have a long lifetime (I suppose several decades, how long exactly ?). Some steam engines (trains) also still work. Then there are probably a number of clocks that run for a long time as well.
Does anyone know of specific examples for these ?
Any other machine types ?
Star Trek
*g*
it's in my head
Yeah, it was Voyager. Remember: "veeger"
You know what would be cool? Sending a zero-g ecosphere out with the next hunk o' junk that we hurtle into deep space.
"The more you know, the less you understand."
Actually, the NASA budget is up in FY 2001, from $US 13.6 billion to roughly $14 Billion.
Ah, the uptimes you could get on an Intel chip before the days of Windows...
Stop over-analyzing your analizations
A pity, one of the truly great space projects of all time.I hope that this is just a glitch or some temporary condition.
Elgon
NASA said some other probe peaked around 21 miles a second, so I don't see whay this is so incredible. 28 years of impulse makes velocity very very high.
"All I do is eat and poop!" -- Bean
Anybody know if NASA plans to launch a newer, bigger, better, faster, more version?
That is another sattelite with the same mission parameters albeit maybe on a slightly diffrent course but with more power so it'll last longer?
Because the advances made with technology should enable a more sturdier version that might reach even farther and hopefully make contact with something...
what are you smoking? The last few years of NASA have been absolutely dominated by a "faster, better, cheaper" mentality. Witness all the bragging about how cheap the last few Mars missions were. Goldin (NASA head honcho) has admitted that this policy (which he was responsible for) was the main reason we had the catastophic losses of those Mars missions [cite]. He went so far as to actually offer NASA budget cuts to Congress...
Chances are not very good.
The problem is that the transmissions from Pioneer 10 are already just a smidge above the noise threshold for the receiving equipment. Even if things had gone exactly as planned, we'd have still lost contact with it next year.
It's amazing to think about the probe. It's the furthest any of our technology has travelled away from us.
It's still out there now, in the cold, cold, cold of space. It is truly swimming in a sea of stars. The Sun is barely brighter than the other stars in the sharp blackness. It still listening for the whispers of its masters, still waiting at their command. However, it can no longer hear from the people who have cared about it so much. It is all alone now. So far, far away from home.
As the years go on, it's heart, the RTG, will slowly cool, and the bus voltage will drop. At some point, the heartbeat of it's system clock will stop, and the little probe will sleep for eternity. Asleep among the stars.
It had a finite lifespan , accept it and move on
-- Oh Well
As to the question "Who'll own it?", I believe the last recieved message from Pioneer was:
;-)
"w3 tHe 5P4c3 B3Ez 0wN j00r ph33r5om3 pr0b3, suX0rs!"
You just can't keep those space-k1dz down
Combining those two factors, by the time we have the capability to retrieve an object from deep space, the amount of deep space we'll have to search to find them will be just too big, unless we get really exotic and have technologies like endless quantities of nanospaceships with surveillance gear, perhaps.
Could somebody with more background in this stuff please comment?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
(PEDANT)Technically it wasn't a satelite since it wasn't orbiting a major body.
Not to mention those freaking Ethereals... Squaddie 1 goes Berserk. Arrgghhh, not that one in the middle of my Avenger carrying the Blaster Launcher!!!! Splut.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
At least one "FBC" project exceeded it's design lifetime by (as I recall) a factor of 4.
Mars Pathfinder's wee little cutie Sojourner rover had a design lifetime of 1 week (or was it 14 days, I can't recall). It ran for the best part of 2 months, and indeed it's believed Soujourner outlived the Pathfinder (renamed Sagan Station) home base which suffered a transmitter failure... Apparently, the fallback method of regaining contact was for Soujourner to "orbit" Pathfinder at a fixed distance (10 metres?) constantly re-trying to connect; it's been speculated that when we finally get to Mars we might find a deep circular track worn in the dust by Sojourner's continuous circuits...
A nice idea, but highly improbable.
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I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy
It is a shame that we will probably never see anything as successful as Pioneer again. It is far easier politically for politicians to spend public money on vote buying programs like prescription drugs than on not so popular (read: no votes directly linked to) space exploration programs. The best days of NASA are long past. Tis unfortunate.
Curb CO2 emissions: Kill yourself today!
Some days, you just can't get rid of a bomb.
great episode
and even if it were, we probably wouldn't be able
to tell. Theres a difference between *dead* and
a signal so faint that any misalignment makes it
impossible to receive.
Pioneer 10
(Launched 2 March 1972)
Distance from Sun (1 October 2000): 76.18 AU Speed relative to the Sun: 12.24 km/sec (27,380 mph) Distance from Earth: 11.34 billion
kilometers (7.047 billion miles) Round-trip Light Time: 21 hours 00 minutes
The latest Pioneer activity was on September 10, when DSS 63 tracked the spacecraft. The station was not able to acquire the downlink.
However, there was a report of two momentary receiver glitches at the Pioneer 10 frequency. This report was encouraging, since it means that
the spacecraft signal is there, but it is still off Earth point. The Earth look angle (ELA) is estimated to be over 1.4 degrees. The downlink signal
strength drops off rapidly after 1.0 degree. The Earth is just starting to go back towards the PN 10 spin axis. As the year continues, the Earth
will be closer in alignment with the spacecraft pointing and the tracking stations should be able to regain lock. We anticipate this to be about
the middle of December. Our latest calculation of the ephemeris yields: Right Ascension = 76.27 degrees, Declination = 25.91 degrees.
Since Pioneer 10 is over 75 AU distant and its telemetry signal is virtually at the limit of overall communication system's link margin, the
spacecraft was chosen as a convenient test vehicle for the new methodology of Chaos theory. Chaotic.com has been testing the applicability of
new methods in semi-blind signal estimation and noise reduction using Pioneer 10 signals. From the latest progress report by Richard. R.
Holland of chaotic.com, there are two main areas of development: algorithm development and data analysis. Currently NASA and JPL are
working with chaos.com to resolve issues regarding the data analysis. Keep tuned to this web-site for future progress reports on chaos theory
and Pioneer 10.
So... How long until the mysterious alien mechanical entity ONEER comes to threaten our planet? ;-)
Remember, though, we've had craft operating in a much more corosive environment just as long. Look how long many of the airplanes we fly in have been in the air.
Tired of sitting at that karma cap? Start a flame war today! See just how low you can go!
They wouldn't, they'd use punch cards, of course. Course it would take 48 days to install Windows 95 using punch cards... :-)
flags? bah...too late! the subgenius already have the face of j.r. "bob" dobbs on Mars!
What do you mean by 28 years of impulse? Are you implying that Pioneer 10 was thrusting for all that time? It wasn't. It only had one big boost at the start and a couple of gravity slingshots (Jupiter, Saturn, and one of Uranus or Neptune, I think). Other than that, it's been coasting the entire time.
Regards, your friendly neighbourhood cranq
Regards, your friendly neighbourhood cranq
I find it absolutely amazing that NASA managed to get this piece of equipment to function this well for so long, and I don't believe we'll see its equal for quite some time.
Why? There isn't a *need* for this type of technology, people in general are not well equiped to think about what the long term will bring, rather reaping immediate rewards.
the problem? well, this will sound odd, but peace has broken out, the one reason that technological advances in these fields have nearly come to a halt is because there is no pressure to advance them further.
The only good thing I've ever seen coming out of war is that fact that certain fields of technology gain a HUGE momentum, flight, and the ensuing space flight is the best example of this.
I for one, don't doubt even for a second that if there hadn't been several major wars over the past years that we wouldn't be flying into outer space at this moment....
---- Stage 5 of drinking : Politics begin to appeal
U.S.S. Voyager NCC-74656 whips both their butts.
The Pioneer 10 still has that gold-plated plaque with the drawing of a male and female human, the hydrogen atom (or is it the molecule? Don't have my spacecraft encyclopedia with me right now), the map to Sol, and the path of Pioneer 10. Now let's just hope that it doesn't get found and blasted to bits by Klingons (á la Star Trek V).
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
8 miles a second. Here's a stupid thought. It's moving at 8 miles a second. How do you catch it on the other end, to look at it? If it hits anything, it's destroyed, no doubt about it, so that information plate that's on it(if that wasn't a voyager only thing) is destroyed. So you have to have technology capable of hunting this thing down by accelerating to its speed, and then grabbing it, and slowing it down. If one of these wandered through our solar system, we'd have a hell of a time catching it, even with todays technology, no?
Isn't Earth's escape velocity about 25,000 mph? You're saying that 28 years of slingshotting gained an extra 15% from how fast it was going to start with?
Boy, the poster above got it right when he described Pioneer 10 as a tank. It certainly accelerates like one.
--
--
E_NOSIG
I think the Jawas stole the satellite and sold it to a moisture farmer on tatooine.
Meddle not in the afffairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with catsup.
Btw, not everyone believes in some "Lord" who created the universe. I certainly dont.
;-)
Right on. I'm firmly belive that the universe its just the inside of a giant marble, being played with by aliens. Well, it's just as sensible a theory as all the crackpot religious ones, ain't it?
Imagine what happens if we start building probes as described in the other story. The same kind of probe, but sentient. In other words bored to hell. I never imagined actually feeling sorry for a hypothetical machine....
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Nah, in brief moment of clarity from his or her crack-addled state, the moderator realized, rightly, that the post wasn't funny.
well "your school" gets 99% :/
fuckin offtopic sorry
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The reason it lasted so long anyway was probably the fact it wasn't over complicated. I'm not sure if it hasd any software, but if it did it was probably tiny and well understood! I'd like to see that around here!
dnnrly
Even if we could recover it, I don't think anyone should.
For the reason why, read this.
Thad
Thad
Yah, but the hypothetical (isn't it?) Voyager 10 was similiarly lost contact with... Anyway, that's what it reminded me of first. But you have a point about ST:5. Argh, now you've triggered all those unpleasant flashbacks.
-J
Karma: T-rexcellent.
I see that commercial on TV all the time, and actually own a Bow-Flex, it is quite nice, but the poster that came with it is pretty disgusting, as the women demonstrating all the workouts is so overly Muscular it is disgusting
It's the furthest any of our technology has travelled away from us.
Not if you count radiofrequency broadcasts which travel at the speed of light.
DS1 is solar powered... not really much hope for it much beyond jupiter or so (and even thats really pushing it)... Deep space missions basically require nuclear energy sources, no other alternatives exist.
Even _I_ figured that one out! :P Some people just have no ability at all to translate music from text. >:)
One of the Pioneers (and I beleive it was 10)
was launched on my birthday in 1972 (Mar 2). I've always sortof identified with it. Though I suppose we're obviously not life-force linked in some odd sci-fi way, because I'm still typ
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
It wasn't Pioneer 10, it was one of the Voyager probes (ST TPM listed some number > 2 as the total number of Voyager problems that NASA was supposed to have launched, but I believe we in reality only launched 2).
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Our airplane fleet is indeed quite old (dangerously old according to many), but remember that these airplanes are constantly inspected and repaired... Pioneer 10 hasn't been seen by anyone since it was launched.
It's longevity is due to it's simplistic design and it's RTG power sources. The most likely reason for it's (suspected) failure is the final exausting of those RTGs. The voltage has just finally dropped below the absolute minimum necessary to power the transmitter. It's been running very close to the limit for the last several years...
First of all, why does Microsoft have to be mentioned in *EVERY SINGLE* story no matter how little the story has to do with Microsoft? Second, the site you linked to has a PATCH for the problem. There are problems with all software - the point is if they are fixed or not. This one has been fixed years ago so what's your problem? You don't think there has been problems in other OS's and software? You're just making you and the open source community look dumb with comments like that!
The NASA web site on the Pioneer projects is fascinating. 'http://spac epr ojects.arc.nasa.gov/Space_Projects/pioneer/PNStat
Also interesting is an image of the plaque on-board Pioneer, 'http:
Which communist country has ever managed to grow food sustainably? If anything communism has shown a remarkabe lack of respect for the enviornment, far exceeding even capitalism...
For a while, I was an officer in an attempt to revive SEDS (the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space) at the University of Texas at Austin. Our faculty sponsor was Aerospace Engineering professor Dr. Hans Mark, who was also the deputy head of NASA at the time Pioneer 10 was shipped off.
;)
At the time, the engineers wanted to use the latest and greatest technology in Pioneer 10 -- a tape recorder -- to increase its data rate by an order of magnitude. He shot down the idea, because he wanted no moving parts in Pioneer 10.
The much-vaunted tape recorder device the young engineers wanted to use later failed after very brief forays in the next few projects, but Pioneer 10 has been around for all this time. All of science benefits from that decision.
The moral of the story to young engineers is clear: The latest isn't always the greatest. Sometimes you should sacrifice "bigger, better, faster" for reliability.
It's neat that Pioneer 10 lasted so long. I'm sorry to see it go. Of course, now that the Psychlos have it, they'll be after us for all of our gold, and it'll be another thousand years before we reclaim our planet and destroy Psychlo, but it'll all be worth it in the end.
Capt. Ron
crazy dynamite monkey
I think that this post is...well...poetic. I got very touched thinking about this little craft out in the ocean of night. Nice post.
It's the furthest any of our technology has travelled away from us
Not quite...I've read that last year sometime, Voyager 1 passed Pioneer 10 as the most distant craft...
Doh!
As admitted by Microkludge themselves:
http://support.mi cro soft.com/support/kb/articles/q216/6/41.asp
--Remove SPAM from my address to mail me
Erm, it's only a story! It's not supposed to be a factually-accurate "historical" drama...
Besides, if you are going to startpicking holes in plots and factual inaccuracies, you'll be at it forever!
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
Stun Launchers. Best weapon in the game:-)
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
From what I could find.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
What version of Windows was avaliable 28 years ago when it was launched? Who would type in the Product CD KEY anyway?
The truth shall set you free!
The jews are always a good bet ;)
--Giving to trolls for the benefit of us all
Surely we don't want the first men on Mars to plant the red flag of communism on such a brave new world?
You are a little late here, Mr. Erikson, most scientists are practicing communists.
Now, before you flame me, I said communists, not Communists. Think about it.
Most scientists work for the benefit of all, discovering and sharing their knowledge for all mankind, and building upon whatever scientists have done before them. In a perfect world for a scientist, any equipment or supplies they need would be available. Doesn't this sound like the communist motto, "from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs."
KSR makes this point in the Mars trilogy, it's a central thesis. As more settlers come to Mars, the subsidized communist type society becomes more capitalistic, no longer can a scientist take a rover for a jaunt because she/he needs to test something, they need to fill out forms. No longer is Mars in isolation, Mars needs to make a profit.
So basically, unless we privatize space exploration like this nutty Libertarians propose, and put barbed wire around the planets, the first people on Mars will be scientists with communistic (not Communistic) tendencies. Though your point is valid, if NASA doesn't get in gear, it may be the Chinese.
Actually, NASA, ESA, (can't remeber the russian space programmes name) and others do NOT engange in a "faster, cheaper, better" thing. Better is good. But living up to specs is not enough. Because You never can tell if/when something might not go as planned, in which case the specs should be a far cry better then just exactly what's needed. 'Coz You never know what's needed.
--- To err is human... Am I more human than most ?
Surely we don't want the first men on Mars to plant the red flag of communism on such a brave new world?
Why not?.... After all, it already IS a "Red" planet.
Um, what's with these ideas that it died or was killed or won't be recovered? What really happened is that Pioneer reached the edge of the galaxy and just happened to land where the loop-around is.
So, all they have to do is direct their satellites in the other direction. However, if any of those ghosts are nearby, they'd better hope that Pioneer finds a cherry soon...you don't find loop-arounds everywhere in the galaxy.
Withdrawal before climax is very ineffective and those who try this are usually called "parents."
Yeah, its just a piece of hardware but it embodies the dreams of a lot of folks who devoted their working lives to the space program and of a couple of generations of kids with stars in their eyes. It should also be remembered that Pioneer and its brethren were designed and built by guys in white shirts, narrow ties, pocket protectors and horn rim glasses.
I'm hoping that by that time we'll also have advanced political systems that won't have such a concept as National. Except possibly the nation of Earth.
--
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Do I look like I speak for my employer?
The actual NASA budget was more of the order of 10-12Billion as it happens. Not sure where the 5+ Billion figure came from. To put that into perspective the average yearly spending on potato chips or pizza or makeup is of the order of $8Billion/year for each item last time I looked. The NASA budget is however discretionary spending and therefore gets scrutinised far more deeply than does the 2/3 of the budget that is on autopilot and cannot be touched ( which does not include the defence budget by the way ).
You laugh... but after Apollo 13, Grumman (the makers of the LM) sent North American Rockwell (the makers of the CM/SM) an invoice for $400,000 in towing fees. I don't know if was ever paid, but it sets an interesting precedent :)
Not as much catching up as you may think. He hasn't put out a new strip in over a year. There is always reading the archive, but I would kill (sodomize?) for new Spacemoose strips.
Laugh while you can, monkey boy!
After reading the article on the front page, I'd like to know at what point the poster as well as /. was able to leap to the conclusion that the P10 was dead. Even the article (diary) didn't come to such a conclusion. As an avid follower of space news (though many believe it a waste of money, even /. at times) I was disappointed to be mislead by the news 'tip' and the irrational jump to a conclusion derived from the fact that the SETI team at first got a signal then determined that it was from their equipment to mean that P10 was dead in the water. This is a helluva jump.
/. doesn't seems to research submitted news tips the way they should for the number of devout daily readers.
:)
There are a number of reasons why SETI equipment, even the Aracibo hardware did not pick it up, most of which have been touched on in previous comments. The problem as I see it is a premature conclusion from one reader and slashdot newsposters not reading the article submitted before posting, thereby leading to a loss in life (mine) rebutting said article.
Lastly, in the e-tip posted on the front page, there were MANY inaccuracies concerning the article, most of which were derived, of course by the tipsters imagination, on a single paragraph. If I'm correct, the posters paraphrase on said paragraph was twice the size of the original. My only real gripe here is not the fact that this is important, its not, the P10 will not really give us much data that we can use for the next few lifetimes if operational, but that a great site like
Please feel free to slam a 1 one me
And Voyager 2 has passed Voyager 1.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
According to the NASA Voyager Page, Voyager 1 is further out than Voyager 2 (scroll down to the stats)
Doh!
I wouldn't give up. The signal might be slightly mis-aimed and still be receivable somewhere along the Earth's orbit. If we hear nothing for 6 months, then we can give up.
Dirty commie martian bastards!
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I loved those Crysalids, once I got flying suits, that is :-( You could mind control them, give'm a heavy plasma and make them shoot other aliens with a firing accuracy of 0%. Great fun.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Please reread Matusushita's comment above. This whole thing is premature. From the project status page at http://spaceprojects.arc.nasa.gov/Space_Projects/p ioneer/PNStat.html :
The latest Pioneer activity was on September 10, when DSS 63 tracked the spacecraft. The station was not able to acquire the downlink. However, there was a report of two momentary receiver glitches at the Pioneer 10 frequency. This report was encouraging, since it means that the spacecraft signal is there, but it is still off Earth point. The Earth look angle (ELA) is estimated to be over 1.4 degrees. The downlink signal strength drops off rapidly after 1.0 degree. The Earth is just starting to go back towards the PN 10 spin axis. As the year continues, the Earth will be closer in alignment with the spacecraft pointing and the tracking stations should be able to regain lock. We anticipate this to be about the middle of December. Our latest calculation of the ephemeris yields: Right Ascension = 76.27 degrees, Declination = 25.91 degrees.
Oops. I remembered incorrectly then. Thanks.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
8 miles a second.
That's not unusual. Just remember, the thing that Voyager 10 flew very close to a planet or two that weighed several trillion trillion trillion tons. In the gravitational interaction between Voyager and, say, Jupiter, some of Jupiter's momentum was lost, which was Voyager's gain. The loss is not measurable by any equipment we have yet devised, but the effect on Voyager was spectacular, accelerating it to.... fancy that... around 8 miles a second. Go Newton!
no, that would be "ah-aaaah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ahhh.... oh-ah-aaaah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah.... ah-aaah-ah-ah-ah-u-u-u-aah-AAAAH-aah-aah... aaah-aaah".
After careful reflection I would be inclined to agree with you. I still haven't figured out how to work in the percussion though (which is essential for the whole opening credits experience). Maybe I could insert a text block that sounded right when printed on a loud dot-matrix? Hmm....
--8<--
--8<--
I think rather than "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" he meant "Star Trek: The Pieceofshit Movie.
All kings is mostly rapscallions. -Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Oh, traveller Bold into the blackness you spread the light. In shroud of yourself sail the distance between the stars.
-- He's fantastic, made of plastic....
[Slightly OT]: While reading this discussion about the Pioneer 10, I've been listening to Orbital's song "Way Out", from their album _The Middle Of Nowhere_. It's beautiful and fitting.
Spooky.
Bold into the blackness
you spread the light.
In shroud of yourself
sail the distance between the stars.
-- He's fantastic, made of plastic....
I bet the space fungus got it.
Or that we have body hair
(As an aside: For those who have seen the commercial, is it me or does every one who uses the BowFlex lose their body hair and have their nipples shrink ?)...
UPS Sucks
Errrr.. wouldn't it have been running Windows 72 ? *g*
UPS Sucks
It would make a pretty impressive museum piece - the first man made object to go out of the solar system, and them come back agin!
Warp Drive? Sorry to bust every ones bubble, but travel through space to other worlds is not ever going to happen the way movies portray it to, if Einstines theory is correct. While IF we could move any thing at the speed of light that could carry a man to a place in space, they could infact make it to far away places which would appear to them to be next to instant depending on how close to the speed of light the person was moving. But when they got back, everything and every one they knew would be gone. Because time would have carried on as usual. If Einstine was wrong, well then.. perhaps we'll meet the Cardassians after all :)
So, if it failed to reposition itself, is there a chance that its signal will be picked up again within a year from now, when the earth moves back into the path of the signals?
That's possible, but unlikely. I haven't gone to the trouble of reading the article, but I can come up with three different ways they could have lost communication with the probe:
1. Transmitter failure.
2. Rotational jets (or whatever it uses to aim itself) failure.
3. Nudged off course/damaged by a chunk of rock (aka meteor/astroid).
I suppose that mainstream media will cover this somewhat, considering the number of years that the thing worked perfectly and the historical role it played.
--
If a tree falls on an anonymous coward yelling 'first post' in the forest, does anybody hear?
--
you must amputate to email me
--
you must amputate to email me
i read all replies to my comments
Galactic center doesn't count? - Peter
INsigNIFICANT
I suppose that mainstream media will cover this somewhat, considering the number of years that the thing worked perfectly and the historical role it played.
Yeah, right. This was a spectacular success, not a spectacular failure. Maybe a blurb on page 28...
I hope the Psychlos didn't pick it up, otherwise they'll be here soon to kill us all for our gold, and John Travolta will be the Lord and Master of those who survive the holocaust!
Seriously, it is kind of sad to read about the demise of Pioneer 10, we all knew it would come one day, while hoping it never would. It is an incredible achievement that it lasted as long as it did. They sure don't build 'em like that anymore.
~Philly
Didn't know Linus was still carrying that old blanket around with him. No doubt he needs it at Transmeta....
Ok, so they play it safe, and they're criticized. They do something risky, same thing happens. Public apathy has been around a lot longer than recently (look back at the last few moon landings). Our culture doesn't support learning and exploration. It supports stabbing everyone you know in the back to become the next Gates.
;)
And no, you'd be surprised about how forward thinking some of these people are. They can't jump on television these days and start pounding their fists about what they really think should be done. They can be far too easily fired, and the public doesn't react too well any more to radicals who voice their beliefs.
Budget cuts on a federal agency mean a lot more than you think. A lot of agencies now don't even have enough money to keep the lights on (reality check time boys and girls. All federal employees don't live in million dollar houses and drive sports cars worth over 100 thousand. Politicians play on that stereotype to get elected because most people are too lazy to actually get the facts). Of course NASA is going to play it safe. If some mission fails, everyone calls their congressmen and complain about their tax dollars being misspent. We're a nation of complainers, we don't call when things go well and voice how we support it. Result, Congress cuts their funding.
I think the public is a lot more to blame then they realize (they also have a lot more power than they realize). If we want back into space, _WE_ have to call, _WE_ have to organize, and play the game their way. Moaning and complaining on the web isn't going to do a damned thing. Pick up the phone, write a letter, get your friends together and do something.
(This rant brought to you by someone who didn't get much sleep last night
please keep sending crunchy satellites [STOP] the last two headed for mars were delish [STOP] your schedule coincides nicely with our mating season [STOP] failure to comply would be bad [STOP]
My .02,
My .02,
zencode
iactivist.org/jason
who says just because p10 has stopped responding that it must be dead? no one i've ever heard of has been 7 billion miles from earth, no one knows for sure exactly what's there. while inoperation may be a possibility, it's not the only possibility. with any luck, the signal is simply too weak to penetrate the hull of the ship that's picked it up.... silly, but not entirely out of the question...
Last time I asked a friend who is studying these objects, he said that their characteristic is that they are mainly outside the orbit of Neptune, which is at about 30 AU. Where's Pluto? 40 AU? Anyway, it may be that there are Kuiper belt objects further out than this, but I think they generally have them a bit closer, but don't take my word for it.
However, the termination shock is believed to be about that distance (in my undergrad courses, a back-of-an-envelope calculation said 75AU, it's obviously inaccurate), but it is heading in the wrong direction, but Voayger may go through it.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
I'm not sure if NASA can actually equal the performance this particular satilate displayed, not only did it prove to be a superior piece of engeneering, but a great deal of dumb luck was involved in it's amazinglky long life.
I feel that exploring space is extremely important, and more funding should go towards realising more of our dreamsin this area, sadly, most governments disagree with me on this, and NASA has greatly suffered from it.
Say about the cold war what you like, but it was responsible for a quantum leap in space technology
And hey, the first five miles of towing are free.
Perhaps it was a long way away, having fallen through "what they used to call a black hole." After all, it seems spatial anomalies are everywhere in the trek world.
----
----
"I used to listen to Null Device before they sold out."
In other news, the Automobile Association announced that it would be reviewing the terms of its contract with customers. Under discussion is clause 12a, which reads:
12.a. The AA shall guarantee vehicle recovery and repair no matter the location and environmental conditions.An AA spokeperson said 'We will honour our existing contracts, but in future we may have to ask for an extra callout fee, depending on location.' The spokesperson refused to comment on the current state of NASA's account.
Not within a year: within 6 months.
Oh please. A Win kernel would have have lasted for 28 years. ;-)
$5.1 billion.
This year, we will give $5.2 billion in aid to Israel so they can kill civilians with our Cobra attack helicopters.
Next year's defense budget is $301 billion.
The only reason I mention this is the incredible amount of waste that our government spends . . . that could be going to actually travel to Mars or explore the universe. I mention the Israel figure because I find it truly pathetic that we spend more on giving Israel foreign military funds than we spend on the entire budget of NASA.
Our priorities are all screwed up. Remember how much national pride and worldwide respect we had when we went to the moon in the 60s?
Let's use out wealth in this country for something truly interesting and expansive.
Anyone here agree? Go NASA!
2 words - tractor beam.
and who do you think is going to end up paying for this? a bunch of 3rd world countries without electricity or basic plumbing?
---
Trust me on this one, you DON'T want to start pointing out the technical inaccuracies found in Star Trek V.
You'll be at it for months.
I do not know, which laws have to be used
in space. But I can imagine, that the laws
take place, that make an ship without persons
on it to you property when you find it.
*whup* "Get along, little electrons. Heeyah!"
As of Jan. 1, 1997 Pioneer 10 was at about 67 AU from the Sun near the ecliptic plane and heading outward from the Sun at 2.6 AU/year
hmmm....2.6 AU/year. 1 AU = 1.5 * 10^11 m. There are about 31 million seconds in a year, so Pioneer is going about 123km/sec.
Escape velocity - sqrt(G*M*2/r).
r=1AU
G=6.67 * 10^-11
M(sun)=1.989 * 10^30
Solar Escape velocity = 297 km/sec.
So how long till Pioneer comes crashing back into the solar system?
Also, isn't the Kupier Belt at around 70-100 AU? Maybe Pioneer got smashed by some icy object out there...
It's outside the region of the solar system where the planets orbit (up to 50AU out for Pluto), but it's nowhere near being out of the solar system since the outermost part of the solar system, the Oort Cloud, may extend as far out as 150,000AU.
--- Brian
Because it doesn't revolve around the Sun or Earth or any other body. Well, I am not sure if it rotates around the cente of our Galaxy or is able to leave its gravitation field as well.
Down below it was pointed out that NASA is hoping for just that.p ioneer/PNStat.html
http://spaceprojects.arc.nasa.gov/Space_Projects/
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
Hopefully there is no beryllium on Pioneer. Travolta and his Scientology buddies will be laughing all the way to the grave when the Psychlos attack if there is.
--
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
It would be much simpler, and take far less energy to simply alter reality with the mathematics on a waiter's order pad.
--
Intel Outside... The Solar System!
/. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.
The real Threed's
--Threed
I believe he's refering to this gem. It's about 7.3 megs though.
--Giving to trolls for the benefit of us all
It's orbiting the center of the galaxy.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Not only are engineers not what they used to be, the proles can't even spell correctly anymore...
Da Daaa da da da da Daaa.. Da da da da Daaa Daaa da da DAAAA da da da da Daaaaahhh.... Daaa da da da dadadada Daaaaaaaaadaaaa da da DA Da da dada DAAAA!!
What the fruck is this supposed to be?
It's the Star Trek theme from the OLD show! Don't you remember the Nomad episode?
--8<--
--8<--
Like a 63 'stang among the cars are That's pretty interesting since Ford didn't start making Mustangs until 1965.
"Honesty is the key to a relationship. If you can fake that, you're in." --Rich Jeni
Are we as humanity so self centered that we think we are the center of the universe. When, possibly, there are other beings flying around in our intergalactic backyard which just happened to pick up one of our stray toys.
Isn't that what we were hoping for when launching Pioneer?
Actually, Deep Space 1 with that fancy ion engine seems like it will be a candidate for one of those ultra long missions. See http://nmp.jpl.nasa.gov/ds1/ .
Funny thing about that image - it's impossible to tell just from looking at it what we see out of, what we smell out of, etc.! :-) Aliens who see this might think we see out of our nipples and eat through our navels, and that our heads are our sexual reproductive organs. Makes ya wonder...
The real Paul Vallee is slashdot userid 2192, and, what do you mean it's not cool to point out your low userid?
It is truly hard to believe that this probe operated for 28 years and is in fact now 7 billion miles away from Earth. Let's consider the facts here: Earth's average distance from the sun is 93 million miles. Pluto, the furthermost planet, is on average a whopping 3.67 billion miles from the sun. Basically, this probe is 3.24 billion miles outside of our solar system and around 7.09 billion miles from our sun.
These figures are pretty impressive. Now let's do some more math. I'm no mathmatician so please feel free to contradict me. Here we go: It took 28 years for this probe to go 7 billion miles. So this means the probe travels 250 million miles per year. This would then translate into 684,932 miles per day or 28,539 mph. Let's be even more specific - this would factor out to 476 miles per minute or 8 miles per second. Now, that's a speedy craft isn't it? Your numbers may differ, as I divided 7,000,000,000 by 28 and divided that by 365 and I didn't factor in leap years and I rounded the numbers off just for convenience sakes. Nonetheless, when you break it down it is pretty cool.
Isn't it great to know that even after the roaches reach out into space a tiny little picture of man and a woman will still hang out there.
Rest in peace little guy, we're all riding with you.
All browsers' default homepage should read: Don't Panic...
Actually, the pride and sound engineering you are talking about are not the main cause of Pioneer 10's extended lifetime.
The main cause is that we did not know what the space environment was like, so we built that spacecraft like a tank. It could have been a much more sophisticated spacecraft if we had known more, but instead it was built like a tank.
The other main factor was Pioneer's source of power: four radioisotope thermoelectric generators.
Actually, it turned out that one of its software functions, used to send a beacon signal, was a little too much like one-click shopping.
NASA had to shut it down or pay the nominal fee of $1 per mile.
at that point you really need to kill the commander. what game did you like better? UFO defense or TFTD? I prefered the plot in UFO defense, but game options and research was better in TFTD. Ship missions were cool, but a lot harder than the city. And with 40+ aliens to a base that made it extremely difficult.
It was the Borg. They were collecting Voyager probes, weren't they?
To other hard-core trek fans: I know the borg were never specifically mentioned in Star Trek: TMP, but I like to think that's how it worked. And besides, if william shatner writes it, it must be true! (well...not really...what a weird book....)
-J
Karma: T-rexcellent.
A little spacecraft
far away among the stars
rest well, pioneer
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
28 years of operation, that is simply increadible!
I can't help but wonder if today's "Cheaper Better Faster" projects will last beyond their specs. Pioneer 10 like so much science before it has provided benifits that the originators never would have forseen.
To the engineers and scientists that built it, I take my hat of too you.
When it absolutely positively has to be there.
On the Mission status page they say that Pioneer 10 is heading towards Aldebaran of the Taurus constellation and will reach it in about 2 million years (Aldebaran is 68 lightyears away).
Gosh... some poophead moderator didn't like my joke!!! *cries*
Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.
what is happening right now is the probe is being used as spare parts by a highly advanced AI robot probe. The two will merge and become something more powerful than any of it's creators ever imagined...
Da Daaa da da da da Daaa.. Da da da da Daaa Daaa da da DAAAA da da da da Daaaaahhh.... Daaa da da da dadadada Daaaaaaaaadaaaa da da DA Da da dada DAAAA!!
5 year mission, eh? I engineering projects are always behind schedule in the future too!
--8<--
--8<--
The SETI project is an impossible pipe dream. 7 Billion miles, thats nothing, thats a mere 1/1000 (.001) light year, dwarfed into negligability by intergalactic and even interstellar distances.
And remember radio signal density drops off by the square of distance (r^2) !!! This proves that in order for the signal to be heard at only 1 light year, the signal would have to be at least 1000*1000 or 1 Million times more powerful than Pioneer. This is feasable, considering the weak transmitter on the aging satelite, but too bad there are no stars that are only 1 light year from us, to hear from the nearest star, more than 4 light years, would require a signal 16 Million times more powerful.
Some of the systems SETI activly surveys are much further than this. Give it up folks!
John
I find it sad that the current administration at NASA are such small thinkers, who have no sense of the vast grandeur that is out there for the taking. What has happened to the days of projects which could excite the layman and scientist alike?
Sure, they've had their budget cut, but that's no excuse for their playing it safe attitude which has led to public apathy and even more budget cuts. And without someone taking an interest in space, how will we ever see all that the Lord has created?
Personally I think that NASA need to get back into the race for the stars before either the Europeans or the Chinese succeed where we have failed for a lack of drive and a sense of wonder. Surely we don't want the first men on Mars to plant the red flag of communism on such a brave new world?
---
Jon E. Erikson
Jon Erikson, IT guru
Let's dream. That plaque attached to the spacecraft will someday (maybe when the concept of a day's length of time has long sense lost its meaning) be noticed. It will be again in the company of an intelligence. Perhaps the nuclear fuel will be as cold as the depths of the deep-space vacuum the craft had called home for so many eons. Perhaps all of the conductors will be cold and energyless. Maybe just enough of our already-ancient technology will make sense and our first statement to the rest of the universe will be given a new charge and aimed back toward us...
Evan - needs to hit preview before submitting
Pretty much says it all. The project and data were more interesting than a good first-run movie, and probably cost less to make than same.
*whup* "Get along, little electrons. Heeyah!"
1. Microsoft didn't build the O/S. 2. It has less CPU power than a timex watch. 3. Al Gore invented it, before he invented the internet. 4. Back then, NASA stood for New And Simply Awesome. Now, it's Not Another Stupid Accident. 5. Intel was a toaster company at the time.
HAHAHA!!! I'M SO-0 FUNNY!!!!
pi=sigma{n:0-infinity}[(1/16)^n][(4/(8n+1))-(2/(8n +4))-(1/ (8n+5))-(1/(8n+6))]
How sad! Now all that's left is dreary, Hemos-posted stories on terraforming Mars...
Human extinction is on the way.
According to yesterday's status report, NASA is thinking the Pioneer 10 signal might be re-acquired in December when Earth is again within Pioneer's one degree look angle. Go here: http://spaceprojects.arc.nasa.gov/Space_Projects/p ioneer/PNStat.html
X-COM! What a great game! What sucked was when your commander got chased down by a crysalid (sp?)Bye Bye best squadie! Now you're a zombie.
We know where Pioneer 10 is going to about 9 decimal places. Eventually we will have advanced propulsion systems that will allow us to chase Pioneer 10 down and bring it back to the National Air & Space Museum, where it belongs. Daniel
I'm no physicist or astro-physicist, but from what I've read, the presence of 'worm-holes' has been 100% confirmed. The problem is however, that the worm-holes are too small to actually do anything. However, again, I believe that it has been confirmed that anti-matter can be used to expand worm-holes, and anti-can be produced at least in minute quantities. So get ready to dismiss the unknown quite so quickly.
Have you no soul?
Is your heart made of brass?
Have you no shame?
Then kiss my...
How can you say what you did and then claim it had a finite lifespan? There's some logical inconsistency there.
Its a pile of wires. But its loss is our own just as the wonders we saw through its instruments were.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
AIAA article
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Then what if they send it back to assimilate earth? As long seven assimilates me I'm OK with it! :)
--
Let's just hope it doesn't come back in a few years as an immense force field under the name P'neer.
It seems that Pioneer 10's antenna pointing mechanism is not working well enough at the moment to accurately point its high-gain antenna at Earth. (It's apparently more than 1.4 degrees off, but we'll move into its beam again as the earth continues to orbit the sun -- projected time of reacquisition is December.) Once signal is reacquired, we'll see if JPL is able to fix the problem somehow, or if we'll be reduced to contacting Pioneer 10 only during certain times of the year when we happen to be within its signal cone.
Just a thought, but I hope that if we ever recover it as a symbol of us triumphing over the tyranny of astronomical distances, that it'd be placed into a museum (how much would the Smithsonian pay for this one?) or installed at the front of the UN. Perhaps there should be discussion - albeit farfetched for now - like those currently about the moon-landing site about drafting laws declaring them as historical monuments.
A HREF="http://www.debianplanet.org">DebianPlanet
-- "I can't tell the future, I just work there." -- The Doctor
"The incredibly hardy, long-lived satellite, which long ago surpassed NASA's wildest expectations for its power supplies and other systems, may finally have drifted peacefully into eternal slumber . . .
<sigh>
We've been through some things together
With trunks of memories still to come
We found things to do in stormy weather
Long may you run.
Long may you run.
Long may you run.
Although these changes have come
With your chrome heart shining in the sun
Long may you run.
- Neil Young, Long May You Run
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
So, if it failed to reposition itself, is there a chance that its signal will be picked up again within a year from now, when the earth moves back into the path of the signals?
A satellite is orbiting something...
so in actuality it died months ago? how long do those radio signals take to get back to the earth?
"...your future, make it a reality, all you have to do is fight for me"
I usually aren't sentimental about non-sentient and man-made things, but somehow the image of being so unbelieveably far from the place of origin and from anything else is quite moving. In addition, it managed to survive far longer than anyone initially expected and gathered far more information than planned. All in all, it deserves respect and a place in the history of space exploration.
But there are still other probes out there, maybe they will even manage to survive as long or longer. I certainly wish so; we won't get anything new so far in near future and there are mysteries like where the influence of sun ends and interstellar space really beings to solve...
Everyone who makes generalizations should be shot.