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Happy 30th Birthday, Pioneer 10

Posted by timothy on from the not-yet-over-the-hill dept.

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."

9 of 170 comments (clear)

  1. talk about clear reception.. by supernova87a · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  2. I have an idea by crystalplague · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

  3. The reverse may apply, too by Rob+Cebollero · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    --
    Decentralization: the brief interval between the decline of one centralized regime and rise of another.
  4. Lond distance comms by cybergibbons · · Score: 1, Interesting

    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

    1. Re:Lond distance comms by Lumpy · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  5. Say in a hundred years... by Vishniac · · Score: 4, Interesting
    ...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.

  6. Re:Actually very funny :-) by Serial+Troller · · Score: 0, Interesting

    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.

    --

    STOP ME BEFORE I POST AGAIN!

  7. Re:If it were going the speed of light... by supermoose · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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?

  8. Pioneer 6 by Catmeat · · Score: 2, Interesting
    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.