Happy 30th Birthday, Pioneer 10

tlon writes: "Pioneer 10, the spacecraft that brought us the first pictures of Jupiter, turned 30 today. Launched in 1972, the probe is now some 7.4 billion miles away, as it cruises out towards Aldebaran, the eye of Taurus. NASA will attempt to contact the spacecraft today, (it was successfully contacted last year), but the round trip time is over 22 hours. How's that for a ping latency? See Nasa's Pioneer 10 Page for more details."

Comments

Ping.

[saintlupus]

the round trip time is over 22 hours. How's that for a ping latency?

Could be worse. They could be trying to get to it through @Home.

--saint

Re:Ping.

[Waffle Iron]

Ping time don't bother me. My skillz are so 1337, I could dial in from that rocket and still rack up a couple dozen frags per game with the rail gun.

Those poor sux0rs just wouldn't know they lost until the next day.

Re:Ping.

[gila_monster]

Hey, my wife's been pinging me all day about the chores, and I still haven't answered. But then, I'm exactly nine years older than the satellite, so I'm entitled.

gm (won't look so good with so many miles on me)

Re:Ping.

[limber]

They appear to have contacted Pioneer! Here's a short article on it.

"The signal was loud and clear and I'd like to say this contact worked like a charm," said Larry Lasher, the mission's project manager.

A radio telescope in Spain received the response 22 hours and six minutes after the signal was sent from us on friday.

Cool!

Hah!

[Quixote]

the round trip time is over 22 hours. How's that for a ping latency?

My ISP does that sitting here on earth. Beat that, NASA!

The aliens that find Pioneer 10 might say that...

[Eddy Johnson]

The extraterrestrial life that finds Pioneer 10 might say something similiar. Their leader might say something along the lines of:

"Friends, collegues, I'm not as in tune with this foreign piece of equipment unlike some of you geniouses there in the back. I don't know about these diodes and this circuitry. I'm just an alien. This is strange. This spacecraft frieghtens me. This beeping, it's like black magic to me. I don't know how this thing flew around in the sky. It could be demons or ghosts, I don't know.

But you know what? Just in case, let's blow this mother****er up."

That's right, children, advanced life forms.

Poor servers

[sith]

22 hour ping? Seems like thats about what nasa's webservers are at right now... poor servers... sniff.

Now that is engineering

[ColGraff]

If they do actually manage to contact the probe, that would be very, very cool. They don't build 'em like this anymore, gentlemen - all you need to do to see that is look at the Mars probes. What's really goofy is how now, one of the farthest man-made objects from Earth is completely, mind-bogglingly obsolete from a computing standpoint.

Re:Now that is engineering

[Steve Franklin]

Maybe that way it won't pose as much of a threat to anybody who finds it and they won't bother to come and investigate. It still amazes me how a bunch of scientific types can be so naive that they assume anyone they manage to contact will be just oh so friendly and willing to coexist. Kind of like George Adamski's "space brothers," don't you think? Have these characters all lost their blinking minds? Do we really want to advertize our existence before we have a decent sized fleet in orbit? But then again, they *are* engineers.

Re:Now that is engineering

[msaavedra]

They don't build 'em like this anymore, gentlemen

In fact, they rarely built 'em like that back then. My birthday is 2 March 1973, exactly one year younger than Pioneer 10, and I already feel like I'm falling apart. ;^)

Re:Now that is engineering

[Lumpy]

and that is another example of writing bug-free code. (something that programmers still claim cannot happen) That probe was built by some awesome engineers... with a awesome budget...

Re:Now that is engineering

[Ivan Raikov]

[...]and that is another example of writing bug-free code.

Actually, I seem to remember reading that Pioneer 10 didn't have on-board computers, as in 1969 it was impractical to build a radiation-shielded computer with the space and cost constraints of the Pioneer project.

I couldn't find a description of the Pioneer 10 hardware, so I could be wrong, though. I did find this page, which is a sort of an interesting piece about how they replaced the PDP-11 which was used to talk to the Pioneer.

Re:Now that is engineering

[Ivan Raikov]

Actually, I seem to remember reading that Pioneer 10 didn't have on-board computers[...]

Well, what do you know. According to Intel, the Pioneer 10 had a 4004 on board. Neat. So, as the old joke goes, in 1972 it took an Intel 4004 to operate a deep-space probe. In 2002, it takes a GHz PIII to run Windows. Things have gone terribly wrong.

Re:Now that is engineering

[Moridineas]

awesome, March 2, 1982 here ^^

Re:Now that is engineering

[JabberWokky]

They don't build 'em like this anymore, gentlemen - all you need to do to see that is look at the Mars probes.

You mean Mars Surveyor, which is doing a fantastic job and sending back detailed information... or do you mean probes like Galleo and NEAR, which lasted long past their designed missions and went on to perform many extra tasks well past their termination date?

Landing a craft is still risky business... doing flybys is pretty simple in comparison (though still fantastically complicated).

--
Evan

Re:Now that is engineering

[SWTP]

Not sure but is it running a RCA 1802 on some gem substrate or was that a later one?

Re:Now that is engineering

[Anonymous Coward]

The 1802 didn't come out until about 1975. That's the one with the "GetHigh" instruction (9N I believe). Sheesh, I still remember the machine code....

Must be getting to be an "Old timer"... hee hee!

Which was quite a few years after it was launched.

Re:Now that is engineering

[Anonymous Coward]

bug-free code?

#include
int main() {printf("hello world!");};

Re:Now that is engineering

[kevquinn]

A quick rummage on Intel's site for the '4004' that Ivan found reveals a tech specs sheet which shows that the 4004 had 640 bytes of addressable memory and a 4-bit bus. Since the number of bugs in code is broadly proportional to the size of the code, it is not unreasonable to achieve bug-free in 640 bytes (or at least, free of bugs that actually cause a problem that cannot be resolved without modifying the code).

Re:Now that is engineering

[Bob Uhl]

Engineers aren't na&ïve; scientists are. The difference between theory and practice & all that. The engineers of my acquaintance have been fairly realistic about this sort of thing; the physicists, astronomers, chemists & suchlike have tended to be rather more starry-eyed. There have been some notable exceptions, of course.

Re:Now that is engineering

[morbid]

Well, there's one obvious bug.
It should at least be int main(void)
if you don't want to check for command-line
paramenters. ANSI C requires this.
It is a side-effect of C++ compilers that this
compiles without warnings (in C++ you don't need an explicit void).

Re:Now that is engineering

[Ranten_N_Raven]

There is a great graphic at Heavens Above that shows the relative positions of the four solar system escapees.

http://www.heavens-above.com/solar-escape.asp

Also, you may want to check Heavens Above to see if the Shuttle/ISS will be visible from your location. At 5:25 AM tomorrow in Santonio they'll be a magnitude -0.3.

The Wonders!

[NetNinja]

To think 30 years in cold dark and hazardous space!
I wish they would build cars to take that abuse :)

How many times have we gone up to repair hubble??
or are they upgrades?

Re:The Wonders!

[csana]

No, the are service packs :)

Ping Latency is 22 Hours?

[Eddy Johnson]

Doesn't sound much unlike AOL on a 56k.

Anyway, we should send another one out there to try to catch up with it and hook it up with a cable modem and it'll cut that time into a fourth...

Not like it matters, I think my TI-83 has more processing power than the Pioneer does. I heard that it has more processing power than the Eagle, the lander that first landed Neil Armstrong and "Buzz" Aldrin on the moon in 1969. Considering that Pioneer was only sent out three years later, I'm probably not too far off.

Maybe I should launch off my TI with an Estes rocket and call it Pioneer 10 Mark II?

Re:Ping Latency is 22 Hours?

[Eddy Johnson]

Heh. No, I just need it for math class.

And I have a girlfriend, so kiss my non-pimply ass.

:-P

ping latency?

[H0NGK0NGPH00EY]

the round trip time is over 22 hours. How's that for a ping latency?

Hmm... page no load. Maybe they're running their webpage through that thing?

Google Cache (karma whoring...)

[H0NGK0NGPH00EY]

Google Cache

Enjoy!

Re:Google Cache (karma whoring...)

[Anonymous Coward]

NASA's web site is STILL down. Must be those dad blasted budget cuts...

Is their server EVER up?

google cache

[SevenTowers]

here
and
here

Yeah, but...

[Eddy Johnson]

• It doesn't even have 1-wheel drive.
  
• Apparently, fuel mileage is horrible, as they only got it out of our atmosphere with enough drive to get it to go a certain way.
  
• No steering wheel... in fact, no steering at all.
  
• The only radio it's equipped with is one with NASA, which mainly consists of things that remind you of 11th grade pre-calc, which makes CB in Iowa sound like the greatest radio station ever.
  
• No brakes, which would definitely help when you get a little too close to a star.
  
• No reverse. No park. Apparently, no stopping for a bathroom break or for lunch.
  
• No legroom. No room for anyone period.
  
• No Internet. The only computer on there has the processing power of a stapler.
  
• No climate control, which would certainly help in -350 F temperatures in space.
  

The biggest plus I can think of that Pioneer 10 has with a car is cruise control. Of course, on Pioneer you can't turn it off.

BOTH pages unreachable?

[DerKlempner]

They can contact a 30-year-old space probe that's more than 7 billion miles away (about 1/1000 of a light-year!), but they still have problems running a web server that can handle more than 3 hits a day.

Combined with all their recent Mars probes' failures, I guess this just goes to show that the folks at NASA haven't been able to show any real progress with the advance of technology.

Klingon Target Fodder

[Anonymous Coward]

Once this sucker crosses the neutral zone, it becomes fair game

Re:Klingon Target Fodder

[Eddy Johnson]

First of all, that happens in Star Trek V, where Klaa (I think) whacks it for target practice. (By this time, I doubt we're still contacting it.)

Secondly, the Neutral Zone is between the Federation and the Romulans, not the Federation and the Klingons.

Wham.

Re:Klingon Target Fodder

[Anonymous Coward]

The opening sequence of Star Trek II has the "Kobayashi Maru" simulation, where the Enterprise crosses the neutral zone into Klingon space.

Double WHAM

Today?

[cperciva]

NASA will attempt to contact the spacecraft today, (it was successfully contacted last year), but the round trip time is over 22 hours

How, exactly, is "today" defined? Do they send out a signal at 1AM and hope to get a reply back at 11PM?

Re:Today?

[ari_j]

Actually, I'd say they'd probably wait until the transmitter that is still capable of talking to the probe is 1 hour past being lined up with it, send 'PING', and wait for the earth to go around to the 1-hour-short mark. But that's just me and my illusion of a round Earth speaking.

Re:Today?

[shokk]

Actually, I'd say they'd probably wait until the transmitter that is still capable of talking to the probe is 1 hour past being lined up with it, send 'PING', and wait for the earth to go around to the 1-hour-short mark. But that's just me and my illusion of a round Earth speaking.

Wouldn't that make the signal go off at an angle that would never come close to where the probe was? Imagining that the probe is at the 0 degree mark, you would try to get this to work by blasting a signal at the 345 degree mark and then listen for it at the 15 degree mark? With the probe 7.5 billion miles away, basic trig says that you are shooting the beam 4.33 billion miles to the one side of the probe and listen for it 4.33 billion miles to the other side of it. The earth might be rotating, but the beam is taking a straight line path from where you fired it.

I would imagine that you have one ground station send the ping fired at the 0 degree mark and 22 hours later another ground station would be listening for it while lined up at that 0 degree mark or somewhere within a cone of reception. Aren't there some communications satellites set up in places near earth to catch the transmissions of probes like this in case the right listening stations are not lined up, sort of as a relay system?

Re:Today?

[ari_j]

What I was saying is that those satellites you mention are a lot newer than this deep space probe is, so it may be that there is only one ground station that can talk to the probe. But note that you can aim radio signals, 15 degrees east or 15 degrees west or whatever it takes, such that at any time within the 12-hour span that you're on the side of the earth that can 'see' the probe, you can beam a signal off to it and listen for one back.

Re:Today?

[Anonymous Coward]

when do you see a complete 12-hour sky? maybe possibly in the middle of nowhere, but surely not on our skyscraper earth. maybe 11-hours, maybe even 10-hours.

Re:Today?

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine you standing in the middle of a turn table, turning rather slowly. And you are talking to someone outside... as it turns, you have to turn your head to still be pointing to your partner, then at some point, you would have to snap your heac back so often.

I guess things get complicated when the signal returns and the reciever is on the opposite side of the earth. But then I suppose there are multiple stations, so one will be pointing to it at all times. So that in 22 hours or later, we get the reply back.

Sounds like my experiences with VSNL... :-)

No wonder it takes so long to do things from India!! :-(

Re:Today?

[Anonymous Coward]

But, there would be a point where it would be impossible for the signal to be picked up. For instance as it gets further out, it takes it longer and longer to get back, so what happens when it takes 36 hours (24 + 12). in 12 hours, you would be on opposite side of earth when the signal returned. You would need two stations, one on opposite sides of the earth.

Re:Today?

[ari_j]

Only a very small portion of the earth's surface is actually covered by skyscrapers. You haven't seen nearly enough of the planet if you honestly believe that there is nowhere left where you can see a 12-hour sky.

Re:Today?

[ari_j]

There are still possible solutions that require only a single communicating station, although its location would now be restricted to the northernmost and southernmost 23.5 degrees of latitude. However, it will still be a long time before this sucker reaches the nearly 2x10^13m range that would cause a 36-hour round-trip communications delay, and that won't even matter if we don't hear back from it this time.

I first read about it in the Reader's Digest!

[Caudipteryx]

That was 30 years ago? I think the article probably appeared within the first year of Pioneer's launch or was that much later? Can anyone remember? I was a kid then and that article started me thinking about interstellar travel and wondering about who will read the messages carried on the craft. Feels like I've fast-forwarded into the 21st century.

That's a whole lotta time!

[El Pollo Loco]

I'm impressed that something built in 1972 is still functioning. Especially when you consider the rigors of space travel, that's quite a feat!

Re:That's a whole lotta time!

[gTsiros]

rigors of space travel.
sure.
the thing is in VACUUM and goes at a CONSTANT velocity.
The probability of it hitting ANYTHING out there is like throwing a stone off of a telsat above europe and hitting a winning lottery ticket.

Re:That's a whole lotta time!

[El Pollo Loco]

True, true. But you gotta remeber it's hella cold out there. So you gotta build circuts that work in very low temperatures. and yes, there is stuff out there. Plus all sorts of radiation, etc to deal with.

Re:That's a whole lotta time!

[shokk]

The thing is traveling very fast and is known to have been hit by teeny rock fragments a number of times. All you need is one little thing to hit it in the right spot to end it all. I'm not sure it's going to make it to Aldebaran since it wasn't built with the smarts to make it through the Oort cloud.

Re:That's a whole lotta time!

[Anonymous Coward]

- I'm impressed that something built in 1972 is still functioning.

Well, I was built around the mid 60s, and AFAIK I'm still pretty functional.

Re:That's a whole lotta time!

[Da Masta]

And considering that it would take a few million years to do so anyway, I don't think really matters whether it gets there or not. Let's all hope a comet hits it or something so we see something cool in our lifetime.

Pioneer 10

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, its great that a probe built 30 yrs ago still
is still working !. Now if only my car was .

talk about clear reception..

[supernova87a]

The amazing thing is that the satellite is sending out a signal with as much power as maybe a watch battery, and we're receiving it from over 10^9 km away...

Of course, the receiving dish is as big as a football field, but still.

Re:talk about clear reception..

[Anonymous Coward]

Makes you wonder how long it'll be before intelligent life picks up all those transmissions from dishes the size of football fields. Or millions of dishes that, collectively, are much, much larger...

22 hrs?

[gatesh8r]

Damn lag! I can't believe how lagged that Quake server is. I swear. I don't suck so bad; I just have a 22 hr ping time.

It's going where?

[big_debacle]

How can it be going to Alderaan? Don't those NASA geeks know that Alderaan was destroyed by the first Death Star a long time ago?

Re:It's going where?

[toxcspdrmn]

Yes - but we only found out about that in 1977 - 5 years after Pioneer was launched.

Re:It's going where?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I realize the parent post should be modded funny, but I'll respond seriously anyway. _Aldebaran_, which is where it is pointed, is the bright red giant in Taurus (Alpha Tauri, for those of you who are astronomically inclined).

NASA filing suit against AOL

[ari{Dal}]

Complaints of erroneous charges in NASA's communications bill have sparked a feud between the agency and industry giant TW/AOL.
An inside source revealed that the controversy errupted when 200 Beds in a Bag ended up on NASA's doorstep.
AOL would not comment on the incident, saying only that it is in talks with NASA to rectify the situation.

IP address?

[ZaneMcAuley]

So what is the ip address of this thing so i can perform a port scan :D

Would make a killer proxy tho :)

I have an idea

[crystalplague]

What if NASA sent out a space probe every year with pretty much the same trajectory. This way each probe could have modern technology, be able to probe faster/better, and if they kept launching them every year, the farthest one would only have to transmit as far as the one release the year after the first was launched so that the 2nd one would amplify and retransmit to the 3rd one and so on and so on.

ok, now bring on the inevitable jokes about a beowolf cluster of probes.

Re:I have an idea

[cperciva]

Two major problems:

First, hardware fails occasionally. The probes would have to be able to send their signals back at least two hops in order to avoid having one failed probe "orphan" many others.

Second, the trajectories rely upon a particular alignment of planets. If we sent out probes year after year, they'd end up going in completely different directions.

Yeah?

[Eddy Johnson]

The opening sequence of Star Trek II has them only enter the Klingon Neutral Zone, they don't go into Klingon space. However, either party going into the neutral zone is looked at as an act of war by the other party.

Triple WHAM, followed up with a BAM, with the exquisite THANK YOU MAM ending.

Booyah!

Re:Yeah?

[PierceLabs]

The Organian Neutral Zone is actually a patch of space between all three parties.

pioneer 10.

[The Hollow Room]

why contact it? Whats it going to say? Still dark. Still dark. Still dark.

Re:pioneer 10.

[LadyLucky]

Whats it going to say

I think the protocol is more along the lines of

PING? [22 hrs later] PONG!

Re:pioneer 10.

[MarkusQ]

More likely they want to know how far it's drifted from where it ought to be.

-- MarkusQ

Re:I know you're a troll, but...

[sweatyboatman]

Remind me never to move next door to you. Most people I know respond to new neighbors by bringing over food and generally being nice. Your first instinct, I take it, would be to kill them.

Sweat

Coincidentally....

[dr_dank]

it'll take 22 hours for the server to recover from being Slashdotted.

The reverse may apply, too

[Rob Cebollero]

Imagine if one day we *do* see an extraterrestrial probe land here. As far advanced as it will appear to us, it may only be an ancient relic of its creating civilisation.

Re:The reverse may apply, too

[linzeal]

I hope that it opens up and starts playing ABBA songs that never made it here on earth like "Frenchman why are you so wee wee" and other unforgettable classics.

Lond distance comms

[cybergibbons]

I know that these probes are currently unmanned - but there is always talk of putting people on mars, or sending crews to far away galaxies.

What do they do for communications then? I mean, Pioneer 10 isn't that far away in terms of the space that we know of. And it takes 22hrs to receive a response.

Is there anything that will go faster than radio (light does, but isn't as easy to use I don't think). Even with light, it still takes an extremely long time.

Does anyone know what sort of data rates you can support over these distances, and what kind of mad FEC and other tricks you would have to implement to make a usable system?

I suppose if they do all this going through tunnels that warp time and space, they'll work out something better than conventional radio, it's just that in films, they seem to have things like phones, never mind being a million light years away

Re:Lond distance comms

[gTsiros]

light is going at the same speed as "radio".

Re:Lond distance comms

[Anonymous Coward]

light == radio

Re:Lond distance comms

[Erazmus]

Light and Radio are both forms of electromagnetic radiation. They both travel at the same speed - 2.998x10^8 m/s in a vacuum.

Re:Lond distance comms

[Robert1]

Far away galaxies? Slow down slugger, maybe we can find a way to go to our nearest neighbouring star system.

Anyway, you CAN make photons travel faster than the speed of light, by a rather large amount -- 300x last time I checked. The problem is that any information carried in them is lost. As for traveling to other systems/planets I would imagine that once a colony ship or whatever reaches its destination, its pretty much on its own, communication=none.

Re:Lond distance comms

[cybergibbons]

Radio waves actually tends to propagate slightly slower than light. Which is why I said that. Going 1% faster over these distances would save a considerable amount of time.

Re:Lond distance comms

[LadyLucky]

Radio waves ARE light. they travel at the same speed, cuz they are the same thing.

Re:Lond distance comms

[Anonymous Freak]

Actually, as has been pointed out by another reader, light and "radio" are both just various wavelengths of electromagnetic energy. In a vacuum, they travel the same speed. On Earth, radio is slower because air affects radio wavelengths and visible light differently.

Re:Lond distance comms

[Erazmus]

Check out The Speed of Light for a reference to the fact that light and other forms of electromagnetic radiation are the same thing, and therefore travel at the same speed.

Now, if they're travelling through different mediums, then their speed is different. An interesting chart showing the different speeds through different mediums can be found here.

Re:Lond distance comms

[gilroy]

To be fair to the poster, there is also an effect due to traveling through the dilute plasma of interstellar space. Honest to goodness, there is an Insterstellar Medium whose magnetic properties affect the propogation of radio waves. See, for example, this page.

Re:Lond distance comms

[Erazmus]

True, the interstellar medium would have a slowing effect, but it would be the same value for all frequencies of electrmagnetic radiation, and therefore no difference in speed between radio and light.

Re:Lond distance comms

[Lumpy]

first, as everyone here has said, in space radio = light in speed.

second, noone has cracked quantum physics enough to discover a way to transmit using another dimension or creating or using wormholes or other FTL technology theories. AS soon as you see proof of multi-dimensional detection, or wormholes, trans-positional quarks, etc.. then I would guess that comms would be the first to follow.

so either you need to wait about 100 years or hope that a major breakthrough in chaos mathematics or quantum physics.

Re:Lond distance comms

[Vishniac]

The biggest kink in any method of faster-than-light travel OR communication is not the actual method of locomotion (wormholes, hyperspace, warp drive, other dimensions, pixie dust) but the problem of causality and the unsolvable paradoxes that can be created with a faster-than-light signal that carries information (or the FTL courier ship carrying a message).

Check out the Relativity and FTL Travel FAQ for a better explanation than I can give. I for one hope that Einstein is wrong... the universe is so much more exciting in Star Wars.

Re:Lond distance comms

[gilroy]

Actually, no. The time delay is a frequency-dependant thing. To quote this paper (or rather, its googlized text at this location),

The ionized interstellar medium causes a dispersion ofthe pulses, such that pulses emitted at low radio frequencies arrive later than those emitted at higher frequencies

So radio waves will travel slightly less quickly than visible light.

Re:Lond distance comms

[LichP]

A Flatmate and I came up with the idea of sending information by gravity fluctuations, which we think should transmit data instantaneously. But short of dipping control rods in and out of a very big nuclear reactor, we can't think of how this could be achieved.

Furthermore, one of us is a pure mathematician and the other an elec eng attempt, so neither of us has a clue about the physics, although we suspect quantum physics probably breaks everything in our cunning little scheme :-)

--
From Phil

Re:Lond distance comms

[alienmole]

According to general relativity, gravity propagates at the speed of light. There aren't any known shortcuts, even in theory, around the problem of communicating any information whatsoever faster than lightspeed. It might be possible to do something with quantum nonlocality, but I've yet to see a credible suggestion for doing that.

Re:Lond distance comms

[SWTP]

There is a tangle Quantum effect that basicaly locks two particles together. Was proven just a few weeks about. So shake one partitle shakes the other. Not much futher in creating instant radio from that.

Re:Lond distance comms

[cybergibbons]

And I point out again, that radio waves, over any given distance, will travel slightly slower than light. In the earths atmosphere, they will travel slower. I did not know the exact terms for it, but gilroy pointed out other effects. Magnetic fields and ionised gases, more so than any conventional medium, will slow radio waves down. It does depend on wavelength.

This means that radio transmissions are slower than light transmissions. It wasn't really the issue of the post either, I was interested in fast than light communications

Incidentally, they have known that radio waves travel slower than light for many years. Look up data on radio telescopes.

Re:Lond distance comms

[Anonymous Coward]

This means that radio transmissions are slower than light transmissions

You really should say "visible light".

Re:Lond distance comms

[Anonymous Freak]

Okay, I apologize. The orignal comment seemed to imply that the poster thought that 'radio' frequencies travelled significantly slower than visible light frequencies. So I assumed that the user was fairly ignorant of the topic, and used laymans terms. Yes, as you point out, it is true that radio frequencies travel slower in the interstellar medium than visible light frequencies, the difference is not large enough for the average person to care about.

e.g. Who cares if it takes an extra 15 seconds for the radio waves to reach us from across the galaxy?

Ping Time?

[manly_15]

I wonder if the ping will be faster than the links in the story after they've been slashdotted...

Happy birthday

[gTsiros]

Happy birthday man, i wish you a hundred years old...

Speed of light is too slow.

[Anonymous Coward]

22 hours is unacceptable. Isn't there anything we can do to speed it up a bit?

Re:Speed of light is too slow.

[PyroMosh]

DH - No, no, no, Light speed's too slow!
CS - Light speed to slow?
DH - That's right we'll have to go straight to Ludacrious Speed!
CS - <shock> Ludacrious speed! Sir, we've never gone that fast before!
DH - WHAT's THE MATTER COLONEL SANDERS?!? CHICKEN?!?
CS - <voice cracking> Prepare ship! </voice cracking>Perpare ship for Ludacrious speed! Close all shops in the mall, secure all animals in the zoo! Cancel the three ring circus!
DH - <grabbing microphone> Give me that you petty excuse for an officer! Now hear this! Ludacrious speed!
CS - Sir, you better buckle up!
DH - Awww, bucke this! Ludacrious speed! GO!
****************

What's truly sad is it's all from memory...

Re:Speed of light is too slow.

[NewOrder]

Now you gota finsh it....

Lonestar = LS
Barf = Barf... :)

Now I'm not sure tho on accuracy :)

Barf = What the hell was that?
LS = It Space Ball 1!
Barf = My GOD! They've gone plad!
(space ball one flies by resembling the color pad)

:)

That is by far the best movie mocking ever filmed!

But with the /. effect

[whopis]

You'll be lucky if you can get a ping back in less than a week....

oh my god

[Anonymous Coward]

you're all a bunch of nerds! .. oh wait

Quantum Entanglement is instant

[1Ith1uM]

Try this article. Information can go faster than light...??!! http://www.qubit.org/intros/comm/comm.html What about thet eh?

dnetc

[Tomcat666]

I wonder if it's still doing something... like distributed.net.

Or is it just flying through space, 100% idle? :-)

Re:dnetc

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think the Intel 4004 inside would be up to much... :P

Destinations and manners

[MadFarmAnimalz]

> probe is now some 7.4 billion miles away, as it > cruises out towards Aldebaran

Alderaan? Oh, aldebaran... Pardon.

> it was successfully contacted last year), but
> the round trip time is over 22 hours

I remember we shashdotted a C-64 once, but a spacecraft?

*Alderbaran*?

[thoughtcrime]

"That's not a moon, that's a space probe!"

*ducks, runs*

let's hope they don't get this ....

[efuseekay]

" Oh my god...it's full of stars!"

Say in a hundred years...

[Vishniac]

...we invent faster-than-light travel. Should we go out there and collect Pioneer 10 and the Voyager probes and everything else we've launched and put them in a museum for posterity? Or should we let them continue to drift through space, humanity's silent ambassadors to the stars?

Just a question.

Re:Say in a hundred years...

[scorcherer]

We could probably collect them without FTL travel. They're not exactly moving at c. But to do that we'll need something much more economical than our current propulsion technology.

Re:Say in a hundred years...

[nrowe]

I vote for letting it continue on its way. The interesting conclusion on the Pioneer status page is that "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." This is because in about 5 billion years - give or take a few months, our sun will expand and consume Earth.

One of the most enjoyable parts of reading the DUNE series of books by Frank Herbert is that the Mona Lisa pops up after having been removed from Earth many thousands of years previously.

To ensure Pioneer 10 is not all that's left of us, we need to start crating things up now and storing them off planet.

Re:Say in a hundred years...

[Waffle Iron]

.we invent faster-than-light travel. Should we go out there and collect Pioneer 10 and the Voyager probes and everything else we've launched and put them in a museum for posterity? Or should we let them continue to drift through space, humanity's silent ambassadors to the stars?

We will let them drift. However, once extra-solar system travel becomes dirt cheap, these probes will become tourist traps. Whole shiploads of little brats will go to visit them on field trips. They will become surrounded by porta-potties, discarded hamburger boxes, and T-shirt stands (in all 3 dimensions).

Re:Say in a hundred years...

[Vishniac]

One could imagine the same thing happening around our landers on the Moon and Mars. I hope somebody out there preserves those monuments and doesn't let them turn into tourist zoos.

Re:Say in a hundred years...

[shokk]

Wasn't there an article that was submitted to Slashdot stating that in 3 billion years our galaxy would collide with a neighboring galaxy? In that case there would certainly be a lot less time that we think. Being closer to the outer rim, we might be on the leading edge of that and be consumed should we pass too close to another star. No space probe is going to survive that.

Re:Say in a hundred years...

[polymath69]

No; in most cases, when galaxies collide, no stars even collide at all. The interstellar distances are great enough to make it improbable, even with the millions and billions of stars involved in such a collision.

So the same luck of numbers probably protects Pioneer 10, and some of our other probes ...

Re:Say in a hundred years...

[mgblst]

No.

Just an answer.

Re:Say in a hundred years...

[Anonymous Squonk]

The interesting conclusion on the Pioneer status page is that "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." This is because in about 5 billion years - give or take a few months, our sun will expand and consume Earth.

I'd like to think that, given the several billion year leadtime we'll have, we should be able to acquire the technology to alter Earth's orbit to a proper distance away from the sun...or better still, send a quantum clone of the Earth through hyperspace towards a similar galaxy where it can remain in peace for another couple billion years.

Re:Say in a hundred years...

[TheAlmightyQ]

One could make the point that stars wouldn't have to collide to destroy Earth. Simply another star passing close enough to affect the orbits of the planets could take out most life on earth.

Imagine

[WetCat]

a Beowulf cluster of these...

It will be the largest one...

Actually very funny :-)

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder, did the author of this fantastically
funny timeline actually intend to be funny or
just a troll.

In any event, well done, I'm still laughing :-)

AC.

Re:Actually very funny :-)

[Serial Troller]

I first wrote this (much shorter at the time) for this story, a Timeline of the Future. I've revised it once or twice. I need to work the new subscription stuff into there somehow, still. And it's both a troll and funny.

Scene from a future alien press conference...

[Robber Baron]

In what has proven to be one of the most sensational discoveries in recent times, scientists have announced that they have discovered a probe originating from a far away alien race. This probe contains a plaque containing a mysterious cryptic message. We go live to an update from the scientific team studying the probe...

"After much careful studying of the plaque and it's contents we believe we have determined the approximate nature of the message it contains..."

"It says: Get your free porn here!"

Re:Scene from a future alien press conference...

[orkysoft]

Slashdot math: 50+1-1=49 Huh! must be using one of those new AMD processors...

It's probably because 50 + 1 == 50 (cap) and 50 - 1 == 49

Re:Scene from a future alien press conference...

[ptbrown]

So that's the kind of message we might receive from extra-terrestrials. Here I am wasting my time with SETI@home when all I've gotta do is check my inbox.

Oh, really?

[Steve Franklin]

Like the American Indians who fed the Pilgrims? Do I really have to draw you a picture? "Over here, Cortez! Let us help you land your boats. Here, have some corn and mashed potatoes." Just keep one thing in mind. You don't get to "play again" in the real world. This isn't a video game. If there are as many habitable planets out there as is becoming apparent, a good percentage of them can be expected to be populated by something other than clones of Mother Theresa. In that environment, you don't take off your red long johns and run them up the flag pole. To paraphrase Teddy Roosevelt, "Speak softly and carry a couple of squadrons of star fighters."

But that's really not the issue here. The fact is the geniuses at NASA are still operating in Lavoisier mode. These guys really don't think there *is* anybody out there. They send their little craft out of the solar system and send radio messages to the stars and listen for reruns of alien TV shows, but deep down they're still living in their little perfect Newtonian universe where the sky is unsullied by living organisms. That's how they can presume to endanger the lives of every man, woman, and child on this planet: they still think that any being advanced enough to travel in space must be a god, or at the very least an archangel, i.e., Adamski's "space brothers." No Osama bin Ladens in starships. Perish the thought. Only us lowly earthlings could possibly have monsters like that [irony].

Troll? Well excuse me. I can't express a practical opinion without being called names? Methinks thou art the troll.

Re:Oh, really?

[orcrist]

Like the American Indians who fed the Pilgrims?

And did the pilgrims need the American Indians' help finding America? Any civilization advanced enough to wage a successful war across interstellar distances certainly won't need a roadmap from us to get here. They'll be picking up Gilligan's Island reruns LONG before they find Voyager; so put away the shotgun Wilbur.

-chris

Re:Besides...

[Anonymous Coward]

And the E.T.'s have visited both galaxies. Damn they're cool.

So what's in the ping? Top 10:

[phloda]

1. Are wethere yet?
2. Are we there yet
3. Arewe there yet?
4. Arewe there yet?
5. Are we there yet?
6. Arewe there yet?
7. Are we there yet?
8. Are wethere yet?
9. Are we there yet?
10. Are we there yet?

22 hours? Only a light day!?!?!

[Anonymous Coward]

22 hours hunh? So in 30 years it's travelled less than a light day! Not even a light year or half...or a quarter...!!!

If you want to know why light speed is the limit pick up Brian Green's book The Elegant Universe. Time, Space and the Speed of Light are all related and it makes sense. Also you'll find out why if you smash Super Strings together you may create your own Universe!

What's a "thet"?

[Anonymous Coward]

And what does it have to do with quantum entanglement?

s/billion/million/

[Ignatius]

Of corse, you already knew that (0.04c would be too good to be true).

I think NASA beat everybody with this:

[Anonymous Coward]

All the wear, pitting, and erosion that Pioneer 10 has sustained are probably over now. The asteroid belt and the severe conditions of Jupiter have already been experienced. Now, Pioneer is in the vacuum of space where the average spatial density of molecules is one trillionth the density of the best vacuum we can draw on Earth. 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.


Read that last sentence again. Pioneer 10 is likely to become one of the longest lasting things that mankind has ever created. Think deeply.... that is one heavy-duty accomplishment.

Leave it out there for this reason:

[Nick Driver]

All the wear, pitting, and erosion that Pioneer 10 has sustained are probably over now. The asteroid belt and the severe conditions of Jupiter have already been experienced. Now, Pioneer is in the vacuum of space where the average spatial density of molecules is one trillionth the density of the best vacuum we can draw on Earth. 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.

Read that last sentence again. Pioneer 10 is likely to become one of the longest lasting things that mankind has ever created. Think deeply.... that is one heavy-duty accomplishment. We should leave it out there just for that reason.

Gravity Mystery

[Tablizer]

Pioneer 10 is part of a Gravity Mystery that is yet to be solved. A story about it:

http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/space/05/21/gravity.m ystery/

Gravity still stumps physicists like almost nothing else. This may be a hint for a new breakthru in our understanding of gravity.

Re:Gravity Mystery

[Anonymous Coward]

it's funny. since we know so little about how to go in a straight line, we are doomed to always going in curved lines and going back to where we started eventually. until we figure out how to go in a straight direction continually, we will never get any place far.

Contact Attempt Sucessful...!!

[maddmike]

Apperently the attempt to contact the Pioneer 10 spacecraft was sucessfull!!! This story over at Yahoo has all the details.

about that golden plague on the side

[Tablizer]

(* I was a kid then and that article started me thinking about interstellar travel and wondering about who will read the messages carried on the craft. *)

I feel a little uneasy that the furthest probe has a picture of naked humans on it (re: "the plague"). Wouldn't it be more telling about us if the couple was shown wearing a tuxedo and an evening gown instead of raw flesh? The way they did it, it seems like we are more anxious to talk about our physical bodies rather than our minds and esthetics.

Formal-wear would be more dignifying than flashing Neptune IMO. (Although that babe has really nice hips and sexy long hair.)

Or even an unshaven guy with a beer belly and a woman in curlers and a bathrobe. IOW, how we *really* look.

He he, I wonder how the plague would look if the Taliban sent up the probe.

Re:about that golden plague on the side

[allanj]

The way they did it, it seems like we are more anxious to talk about our physical bodies rather than our minds and esthetics.

If you think of it, most people are just like that...

He he, I wonder how the plague would look if the Taliban sent up the probe.

There would have been no woman on the plaque (IANAA==I Am No An American, but that's a "q&quot, right? The "g" thing is a horrible disease if memory serves me correctly). And the guy would have a huge beard and an AK-47.

Re:about that golden plague on the side

[Tablizer]

(* I Am No An American, but that's a "q", right? *)

Why is it all the immagrants and non-Americans can spell better than me without a spellchecker? Breast milk?

(* [The way they did it, it seems like we are more anxious to talk about our physical bodies rather than our minds and esthetics.] If you think of it, most people are just like that... *)

Not if they looked like me :-)

If they tried to etch me onto Pioneer, they would have had to launch a second probe to continue the image.

Re:about that golden plague on the side

[allanj]

If they tried to etch me onto Pioneer, they would have had to launch a second probe to continue the image.

If it'd make them launch another probe in tandom, then I'd be all for it ;-)

bumper sticker

[Anonymous Coward]

there should be one of those bumper stickers put on the back of it....

"DAMN LAG"

Contact made!

[Gogo Dodo]

Pioneer 10 has responded!

If it were going the speed of light...

[whereiswaldo]

Someone correct me if I'm wrong here...

7,400,000,000 miles = 119,066,000,000 kilometers
speed of light = 299,792,458 meters per second
which equals 299,792.458 kilometers per second

119,066,000,000 / 299,792.458

approximately equals 397,161 seconds
which equals 110.3225 hours

So, if the Pioneer spacecraft were going the speed of light from the beginning, it would have only taken it less than 5 days to get where it is today, 30 years later. Wow! Anyone getting close to inventing speed of light travel yet?

Re:If it were going the speed of light...

[supermoose]

You're actually off by about a factor of 10.

7.4 billion miles ~= 11.8 billion km

Which would mean that it actually takes 11 hours to get there at the speed of light... just like the radio message sent by NASA that was mentioned in the article. =) Doh!

Am I alone in finding the fact that there was a mistake making distance conversions in a thread about NASA rather funny?

Re:22 hours? Only a light day!?!?!

[schimmi]

Sorry, but its only half a light day
( 11h each direction ), but its still
great!
LIVE LONG AND PROSPER PIONEER 10

we will see you next year

Pioneer 6

[Catmeat]

I suppose I better submit the obligitory comment to a Pioneer 10 story, that is the oldest functioning spacecraft is actually Pioneer 6. This was launched on the 16th of December 1965 and orbits the sun, roughly midway between Earth and Mars. It was last contacted in 2000. Story

Deep-space spacecraft tend to me much longer lived than Earth orbiting ones as they aren't subject to Van-Allen radiation, nasty atomic oxygen effects plus the thermal cycling stresses you get from going from sunshine into shadow and back into sunshine every obit.

Re:Pioneer 6

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if it's orbiting the sun between the orbits of earth and mars, it'll be in sunshine all the time. Sure, one side of the craft will be in shade, but a rotating spacecraft tends to take care of any of these sort of heating effects.

Kinda funny that nobody corrected you before now. Perhaps it's the "It was on Slashdot so it MUST be true!" syndrome.

Re:Pioneer 6

[denny_d]

Pioneer 6 was featured on the Star Date radio broadcast by the University of Texas McDonald Observatory on 16 December 2000 - the 35th anniversary of its launch. Pioneer 6 is the oldest NASA spacecraft extant.
from story page

Pioneer 10 v. "Bare Budget" Mars Projects

[BitMan]

"They don't build 'em like this anymore, gentlemen - all you need to do to see that is look at the Mars probes."

You should really compare Pioneer 10 v. Galileo, Cassini or other, similar-costing, "full QA" projects from NASA. The "better, faster, cheaper" Mars probes that gained a lot of noteriety in their failures are NOT good comparisons based on their cost and lack of equivalent QA/testing.

Simple engineering risk analysis showed NASA that the orders of magnitude in additional cost are worth it to guarantee an over 99% chance of success, versus less than 50% in the BFC approach. NASA will no longer attempt to build probes like those three Mars BFC projects (of which, only one was a success) again.

Question

[Cplus]

If anyone in nearby solar systems is making as much noise in space as we are would we be able to hear it?

How far are we detectable?

If anyone out there is doing things similar to those that we do should we be hearing them?

Re:Question

[Anonymous Coward]

The interesting thing here is that it's a question of time.

If someone in our vincinity was broadcasting like us they'd need to be broadcasting at high levels YEARS ago.

If you're talking about farther away areas, that comes down to thousands, even millions, of years.

Since Voyager isn't travelling anywhere near light speed, unlike radio signals, the likelihood of someone coming across it before they detect our radio signals is ridiculously small.

Of course, the joyful outlook is that by the time our radio signals reach another planet with intelligent life, we'll be dust covering the many, many toxic landfills we've left behind.

Live from NASA

[Anonymous Coward]

[joe@center.nasa.gov]$ ping pioneer10
PING pioneer10.lostprobes.sorta.nasa.gov from center.nasa.gov : 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from pioneer10: icmp_seq=0 ttl=255 time=79948 s
64 bytes from pioneer10: icmp_seq=1 ttl=255 time=79231 s
64 bytes from pioneer10: icmp_seq=2 ttl=255 time=79192 s

--- pioneer10.lostprobes.sorta.nasa.gov ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max : 79192/79457/79948 s

whataping

[patchezzzz]

Wow I suppose my latency wasn't all that bad with counter-strike...

Wow Pioneer is 30, I am a little over that and I almost share a birthday with her and we also talk to our family once a year...=)

ping...

[dotBeldin]

Happy Birthday Pioneer 10..

http://beldin.nu/pioneer_10_ping.jpg

UPDATE 12:05EST - CONTACT MADE

[crumbz]

Just saw on CNN that contact was made via a radio telescope just east of Los Angeles.

Look at it this way...

[Anonymous Coward]

...It's already outlasted Carl Sagan, who developed the plaque for it. And I think that's what Carl wanted. Let it keep going, I say.

International Space Museum

[Frank of Earth]

03/03/5001:

Thanks to an old article found on something called "hack period", we found a reference to an old Earth based satelite launched ~3000 years ago. After tracing its route, it apparently, got stuck in the Kardarese trolling nets in 2030. They were nice enough to hand it back and we have since put it in the ISM. If you're interesting in seeing it for yourself, it's on the first floor next to the Mars rover and Hawking's Fusion Engine.

As always, donations are welcome but not mandatory. A donation of 6 credits will give a free holocube of Earth's History of the last 5000 years, including the historic holo-sim of the first contact with the Radiams.

we should use it as a backup

[roman_mir]

Too bad there are no harddrives big enough on that thing to be able to backup all the earth's history as we know it. We could still do it, back up everything we can possibly think of onto non magnetic storage devices, some DVDs I guess and send all this stuff to space.

On a lighter note, what are the taxes for running a business out of a satelite flying some 7.4 billion km away from earth in space? Could we have a beow... sorry

Pre-Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazing what NASA did before Microsoft Programming Tools. Maybe thats why its so reliable.

WhatMeWorry!

BOFH config

[den_erpel]

Just hope they didn't do the following :)

echo "1" > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/icmp_echo_ignore_all

Aliens and the RIAA

[Anonymous Coward]

What happens when aliens finally pick up P10? Will they be sued by RIAA for illegally copping the gold record?