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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.
...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
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"
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.
From what I could find.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
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!
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.
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.
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.