Slashdot Mirror
NASA Gives Up On Pioneer 10
Soft writes "Another Energizer Bunny has finally given out: Pioneer 10's generators have decayed to the point that DSN can no longer detect the probe's signals. It was the first spacecraft to penetrate the asteroid belt (1972) and fly by Jupiter (1973). So long and thanks for all the pic's..."
They just don't make 'em like they used to.
Pioneer 10, and other satellites of that era, worked far beyond what they were intended, and did a darn good job (and then some) at what they did. Pioneer 10, you did good. May you rest in peace. A job well done.
A little spacecraft
Far away among the stars
Rest well, Pioneer
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
This is the second major deep space probe in the last few months that has gone south. Sad, because Pioneer 10 was the one that paved the way for so many other missions (like the Voyager Missions).
Here's to a long and steady life to the remaining deep space missions out there.
It's 7.6 billion miles away. Almost 12 hours at the speed of light. And it will take two million years to reach a star considered to be in our close neighborood.
Incomprehensible space...it's incredibly daunting, yet unbelievably appealing. Pioneer 10 was sent out in the same spirit as the pioneers of early America: the lure of seemingly boundless space and undiscovered wonders.
This pioneer is blazing a trail we all hope to follow someday. Goodbye Pioneer 10, you have served us well.
...
If/when technology permits, we should make it a point to send a ship to retrieve the probe, for both practical and symbolic reasons. It'd be interesting to see the ware and tare on a craft that's been through so much as it has; and, it has a great historical value. As a sign of respect to itself and its builders, Pioneer deserves to be in a measeum of sorts.
Of course, my other half tells me, for the same reasons, let it alone, in space, quietly, where its home is.
--
http://nemilar.net - Not your grandmother's soup kitchen
When people ask me, "What sign?" I say, "Sputnik."
:)
If you think you feel old now, wait until you start getting old, my son.
America's oldest man died on Monday. He was actually born in a log cabin and of high school age when the Wright Bros. first flew at Kitty Hawk.
Think about that one the next time you feel "old." Your world has hardly moved at all compared to his.
KFG
Why don't all you people stop thanking a hunk of metal and start thanking the scientist and engineers that designed, built, and launched Pioneer 10. They are the real reasons this post even exist.
You know you are truly geek when something like this almost brings tears to your eyes. I mean this thing had less computing power than your average calculator and yet it managed to be useful for thirty years?
See what happens when you actually give your space programme decent funding? You do something like this, something which comes close to making the human race look like something more than six billion savages scrabbling in the dirt.
It may well have been possible for you to have had a computer all of your life. Even the internet, nascent as it may have been, may well predate you.
When he was born he had no *electricity* and no one in his family had ever seen an automobile. Geronimo had only been captured three years previously and was not only still alive, but a comparitively young man.
The world he was born in to was one someone born 500 years before would have recongnized. The world you were born into is one that that hypothetical person couldn't possibly even have conceived of.
You are talking differences in quantity. I am talking differences in quality.
There is no essential difference in type or quality of life today than there was 40 years ago when I first entered school. We live the same way now, with mostly the same things, as we did then. Electricity, phones, central heating, planes, automobiles, movies, TV, hydrogen bombs, etc.
The cars have become a bit more refined, the planes a bit faster, the phones cordless, the movies, well, they havn't changed much at all really. These are just the things we already had becoming better.
I'm not saying we don't live in interesting times, or that I'm not glad to be here, but the two cases are *damned* different.
By the way, the commercial sail record from Sandy Point N.J. at the entrance of NY harbor to Lands End England was only 11 days. It stood for 100 years.
And I'm *damned* glad the internet hasn't come up with one single reason for me not to go to London. That would suck.
KFG
As a coherent signal, yes. As static, no way.
The Earth emits almost as much RF radiation as a star. Anyone ET who has been watching our system for the last century would have noticed the massive climb. Anyone ET who is just starting to look at us would notice the anomaly. This would be visible anywhere in the appropriate radius, (about 70 light years), AND that radius is limited by lightspeed, not signal strength.
"Software is too expensive to build cheaply"
We need a new space race. In the 1950s and 1960s the U.S. was in competition with the Soviet Union for the exploration of space. The race began with Sputnik and ended with the Moon landing in 1969. Since then, the Soviets/Russians have concentrated on the space station (Salyuts and Mir) and the U.S. has concentrated on the Space Shuttles. This has lead to the current International Space Station.
What we need is a new space race to get us (Humankind) off of our duffs. If China gets their space program off the ground the way they want to, we may see one. Then things will really start to move again. Man back on the Moon, missions to Mars, and more (and better) automated spacecraft exploring the solar system. Pioneer 10 was a well built, wonderful space craft. I'd love to see new ones of that calibur made with today's technology. We just need the incentive.
Beware of Sleestak