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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."

5 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. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.

  5. 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?