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Pioneer 10 Still Running After 30 years
evilempireinc writes "According to this article in Scientific American, Pioneer 10 is still functioning 30 years after it was launched in 1972, and is still sending back scientific data. The article mentions that two other old space craft, Voyager, and IMP-8 are still functioning after over 20 years as well due to overbuilt construction and redundant systems. Can't help but wonder if the present generation of "faster, better, cheaper" probes will ever live this long though."
As we all know, Voyager will still work in 200 years, when Kirk has to rescue Earth from it returning... ;)
just wanted to say it, probably doesn't apply here though
Analytic & algebraic topology of locally Euclidean meterization of infinitely differentiable Riemmanian manifold
is self delusion Due to Y2K issues it thinks it's still 1972, so it's way too young to burn out and die
http://fsfeurope.org/
I mean.. of how much use is a 30 year old probe? I think I'd probably want to send out cheaper probes more frequently than still be getting data from an old one. I know it takes a while to get stuff out that far and all, but doesn't newer mean better?
Poor Pioneer 10. I don't know what it did 30 years ago, but I'm sure the period for prosecution must have expired by now. Let bygones be bygones and stop chasing the poor thing.
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..."Can you hear me now?"
Error: Success
"their radioactive power sources should keep them chugging along until at least 2020. And Pioneer 10? It's on course to reach the Taurus constellation in about two million years. "
Meanwhile, on Planet Zydeca, near the Taurus constellation, around 2019...
"Captain! Incoming primitive radio active missle from the Human sector, Earth!"
"Send Bill Gates a snippet of AI code. That should wreck their social and economic systems. Hrm.. and make their Sun a few degrees warmer for shits and giggles"
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Pioneer 10 has also recently divorced its wife, a Tandy TRS-80, and has been seen tooling around town with a perky young AMD. Scientists have theorized that Pioneer 10 may soon take up skydiving in a vain effort to prove that it is still young. "We hope that Pioneer 10 will just admit to its age and settle down, possibly move to florida and play some golf" said Dr. James Tooly of NASA, "It's just disgraceful..."
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Forrest Gump, is it you?!!
Pioneer 10 is still functioning 30 years after it was launched in 1972, and is still sending back scientific data. The article mentions that two other old space craft, Voyager, and IMP-8 are still functioning after over 20 years...
Even numbered releases always were the stable ones.
You not only know how much you paid for a watch you bought in 1986, but you also wear a digital watch all the time? Go take a shower, go out and get laid. It's clear that your wife isn't doing it right.
And underneath the picture, the words:
"Missing. Have you seen this spacecraft?"
-- Alastair
Hm, there's the dark force that accelerates the universe's expansion, and now there's the "mysterious force" that deccelerates a space probe? What's next: the Irresponsible Force, which is what causes events to take place (interstellar eruptions, interplanetary collisions, graduate students' completion of their dissertations) at the last possible moment before they become impossible?
exactly like my search for my next girlfriend...faster...better...cheaper...
That tech support that does not kill me...drives me crazier
And underneath the picture, the words:
"Missing. Have you seen this spacecraft?"
Only for Mars Observer.
A legparnasom tele van angolnaval.
What I want to know is, why does the plaque showing humanity in all its naked glory have the man waving hello? How are aliens supposed to interpret this? For all we know that could be the intergalactic symbol for 'come and eat my species, we taste really yummy'...
Yeah, they should have inscribed the Universal Greeting from Transformers instead: "Bah Weep Granah Weep Ni Ni Bong."
And, of course, Pluto expressed his opinion on the whole matter here.