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Remembering Pioneer 10
Daniel Goldman writes "Twenty one years ago today, Pioneer 10 became the first spacecraft to leave our solar system, by crossing the orbit of Neptune (which was then the farthest planet from the Sun). Pioneer 10 was the first spacecraft to enter the asteroid belt, the ring of giant rocks beyond Mars. It survived and zoomed on to Jupiter in late 1973, where it became the first spacecraft to take close-up photographs of the storms on the giant planet's surface. After Jupiter, it kept going, collecting data on the particles and radiation it encountered. More info about Pioneer 10 at Wikipedia."
If only there were more revolutionary and pioneering probes now...
the Pluto Probe may or may not be dead...
Mercury is iffy...
The only thing on the radar screens is more Mars, and JIMO.
Twenty one years ago today, Pioneer 10 became the first spacecraft to leave our solar system, by crossing the orbit of Neptune (which was then the farthest planet from the Sun).
I guess that depends on where you define the edge of the solar system. What about the Oort Cloud? What about that tenth planet we can never seem to pin down?
Because the last time we did this story it was 20 years ago today.
Happy New Pioneer 10 Year everybody. Whoooooooooo!
KFG
...when it returns as V'Ger. ;)
Find out about the Lexus Rx400h Hybrid!
which was then the farthest planet from the Sun
/nit picky bastard
Yeah, I hate the way they keep adding new planets. Oh, you meant farthest known...
We'll soon be dealing with an unstoppable force known as P'Eer!
Long Live Pioneer 10. It is amazing to think that a human creation has traveled so far and survived so long.
/Rant
Built back when things were made to last, Pioneer 10 (according to WiKi) was still used as a training platform just a few years back.
And the two Mars rovers are a reminder that smart people still are working for NASA, as they have out lasted anyone's prediction.
Makes me proud
--sig fault--
What's truly amazing about Pioneer and all the other satellites of the era is that they have lasted so far beyond their expected lifetimes. If I remember correctly, Pioneer was supposed to die after reaching the outer planets, but it died in late 2003. The work they do at NASA and especially JPL (where most of the unmanned devices are designed and built) is truly impressive, and even more so considering there usually aren't any second chances available (with the noteworthy exception of Hubble).
Funny I was just reading about Pioneer a day ago. The Pioneer Plaque is very interesting to think about... just imagine an extraterrestrial life finally reading this plaque. I can't ever imagine what a super-intelligent race could do with it.
Just think about it. We think of aliens as being these super intelligent creatures capable of time travel and the ability to travel at the speed of light. We are probably wrong. There are probably races that are millions of times more advanced then or there are races that are millions of times dumber. Then there is that change that the human race is the only one in existence, but then you can start thinking about Multiverse.
It's absolutely mind-boggling about some of the ideas out there. The scary thing is that the reality might be exactly what sci-fi authors are telling us.
Did they use CCD's? How did cameras on board space probes work back then?
.. I think Voyager did use CCD's.
Anyone know
Everyone knows that pioneer 10 was destroyed by Klingons in some harmless target practice!
It would appear they are defining the edge of the solar system as the orbit of the outermost planet. (Duh...)
The edge of the solar system is the heliopause. Pioneer 10 has not gotten close to that. The honor of the first man-made object to leave the solar system belongs to Voyager 1, launched over 25 years ago.
Imagine if moore's law applied to space flight...
How close to the speed of light would our space ships be traveling? Anybody?...
... first spacecraft to enter the asteroid belt, the ring of giant rocks beyond Mars. It survived ...
Contrary to nearly every science fiction chase scene, the asteroid belt in orbit around our star is hardly what anyone would call dense. It "survived"? Heck, it'd have to try pretty hard to hit a rock out there!
Of course, the most important contribution of Pioneer 10 to fundamental physics may be the Pioneer Anomaly : http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/gr-qc/9808081
Um... neither of which are the furthest known anymore.
I guess there are a few professional rocket scientists hanging out here (and plenty of amateurs...), so now is a good time to ask a question that has bugged me for a long time:
:)
Has any consensus been reached over what has caused the unexpected change in velocity of the Pioneer 10 and 11, Ulysses and Galileo probes? Remember this?
Since this was announced I've done some regular googling to see if this has ever been adequately explained. There are plenty of pages out there with plenty of theories, but most of the sites discussing this also have theories about things like zero-point energy generators, perpetual motion machines, that sort of stuff... Hardly the sort of thing that smells of proper scientific method.
Other theories include drag from dust, Changing velocity of light and "tired light redshift" (what the HELL is THAT???)
I have found this paper, which looks very interesting, and much more authoritive, but its is unfortunately waaay over my head!
There is still a lot of discussion on this topic, can any astrophysics lurking here comment? Are we looking at a modification of gravity? Does this tie in with dark matter/energy?
Ta
I don't mean to sound dirty in such a respectable forum, but I couldn't help but notice that the Pioneer plaque has much more attention given to the male genitalia than the female genitalia?
Probably would've been a bush considering the period. Maybe none of the NASA plaque designers were good at curly hair.
And in 50 years from now, some space-tourists will play catch-up with it, just because they're curious what became of it
Dude, have you taken a look at Earth lately? If I was a super intelligent alien with 80,000 years greater technology at my fingertips, a galactic slum infested with psychotic and homicidal creatures would probably be dead-last on my "places to visit" list. ;)
No offense to my fellow earthlings.
Hi - why can't NASA try to use some nearer spacecratt (Cassini, Mars Express etc.) to communicate with Pioneer 10?
Here's a stupid question. Hopefully someone knows the answer to this, because it's something i've never understood.
/. hive mind: Whats the deal? TYIA :)
How the hell is this supposed to tell aliens just where the fsck that little tin can of ours came from?! Ok, obviously the picture at the bottom has the sun, the planets, and a big friggin arrow that should be rather obvious. But what in gods name is all that other stuff? Whats that burst-like thing supposed to be? A dogs butthole? Or what about the sideways parachute? Or the goofy looking glasses at the top? Whats it all mean? And how are the aliens supposed to figure out what it is?
I've wondered this ever since I saw that plaque oh so many years ago in elementary school. So I ask of the all knowing, all seeing,
We've looked at your outbound TV signals of American sitcoms, and listened to your radio shows, which have penetrated many light-years into the inky void of space. We have reached this decision about contacting Earth
Fuhgeddabouddit.
I didn't think the house band in Hell would play this badly.
Even after the many mishaps (>$40 mil lost) due to the use of nonmetric measures, NASA still includes the nonmetric measures (miles and mph) in their descriptions. That is stupid.
s /p ioneer/PNStat.html
http://spaceprojects.arc.nasa.gov/Space_Project
thanks, you're a pal
Pioneer F is Pioneer 10
Pioneer G is Pioneer 11
whatever happened to Pioneer H?
I'm not sure what the naked man is supposed to show.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
So who is gonna buy it a nice cold beer?
I remember this date, because NASA set up a 900 number celebrating the event where you would call and listen to a little talk about how far Pioneer 10 had travled and then you could hear the "beep beep noises" coming from beyond the orbit of Neptune.
My grandmother dialed the number for me (on a rotary dial phone!) and got mad since I listened to it twice, fearing it would charge her twice as much.
This comment is so far down, I'd be surprised if noticed by anyone.
There are two kinds of fool. One says, This is old, and therefore good. And one says, This is new, and therefore better.
The woman of the Pioneer 10 plaque (check the Wikipedia link) has no genitals.
Alien biologists will have a hard time figuring out how human reproduction works.
Then when the aliens eventually realize that the genitals were omited for the woman (but not for the man) alien sociogists and psychologists will have even harder time explaining why we did this.
its how they all start with naked men and hos'
Just when I think I have no life, you show up and save me from oblivion. Thanks!
--
What would Bill Clinton do?
Perhaps they'll wonder why she doesn't have an in-built drinking tube.
But more likely they'll just figure she takes it up the @$$.
Intellectual Property
Intellectual: of the mind
Property: that over which one has control
Sgt Pepper taught the band to play...
"Can there be a Klein bottle that is an efficient and effective beer pitcher?"
I notice that Pioneer 10 was built using UK/US units whereas Beagle was built using metric.
It seems that NASA has had more success BEFORE the metric crap started being used.
www.metricsucks.com
Your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Stupid 2 minute posting rule!
Your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
"...happen to be within 80,000 years of us, yet no race is more than 80,000 years ahead? ..."
Just because someone is much more advanced, doesn't mean we should have heard from them by now.
"All conspiracy theories aside," if there WAS someone that advanced they probably sent out probes 1000-100,000's of years ago, and they've long since passed us by. In which case, they probably concluded they were the only intellegent life and stopped bothering to send out probes. Heck, maybe they have a SETI team that gets laughed at every 1000 years when they send out probes. "We've been sending out probes for the last million years, and noones ever radioed back, and here you go wasting another quadzillion megabucks trying to find someone who isn't even out there."
Really, there's no reason to believe that in the tiny fraction of a moment WE'VE been able to detect an ovature from another planet that the other race has even bothered to try.
It's FAR more likely that the LESS advanced race would contact the MORE advanced race. Why? Because as soon as the less advanced race is capable of doing so, they start trying to contact/listen for the more advanced race, while the more advanced race has been listening for 1000's of years but probably doesn't even bother trying to contact anyone execpt for every 100 years or so.
The whole, "we haven't been contacted so it can't be possible," idea is just shortsighted.
You asked
> I know that RTG wattage is to low to power the
> transmitter, but is there any part of it that is
> still 'on'?
After three decades, really doubt it.
The thermal energy from the plutonium was only expected to provide max power for like 17 years. After that, the mission controllers had to budget the declining electrical power really carefully.
> Also, I am under the impression that in all odds its did
> not fly with an onboard computer so some sort of logic
> based control system was used. Mind telling me a little
> about how the system opperated
Pioneer 10/11 were about as intelligent as Pamela Anderson. We're talkin' major dain bramage.
Pioneer mission controllers flew the spacecraft by sending command sequences uplinked in 22 bit frames into this dinky on-board buffer. The commands sequences were usually timetagged but you could give it instructions to be executed immediately. They were just brain dead commands to turn experiments on/off, turn power supplies on/off, warm up and fire reaction motors, etc. Sorta like a fancy cycle control on a washing machine. The engine management system on a '82 Buick is waaay more sophisticated.
It's major saving grace was that it was rock solid. Problems were always on the dirtside systems, which could be good and bad. One time I was chasing a bug in the C3 software and I got to remote pilot Pioneer 13...by accident. Talk about a major fuckin' "Oooops". The NASA guy doing flight ops duty saw the on-board command count increment. He didn't freak out, just stood up and made sure Kathy,the FOA, was sitting right next to me at the command console. Just a bunch of NOOP commands but still, I was just so lucky they didn't shitcan my stupid butt.
But like how many of us geeks can honestly say they once commanded a spacecraft orbiting Venus?! Damn, that was the coolest job a young geek could ever hope for..
> and how data was stored and sent to earth?
Getting data back thru the DSN was such a fuckin' amazing feat....It's the RF equivalent of getting data sent via Morse code from a 3 watt lightbulb floating out around Saturn with sun shining in your eyes! No shit.
The xmiters on the Pioneer spacecraft were just sooo under-powered. The Deep Space Network receivers had to be so incredibly senstive, something like a a -200dB s/n ratio as I recall. To get that kinda performance, they had to run the amps in a bath of liquid nitrogen. This was to reduce the circuit noise from Brownian motion. Make a good audio amp for that new home theatre system, eh?
Since I only ever worked on the uplink side of Pioneer, I have just a vague idea what the telemetry data stream looked like. I can tell ya that it was one royal pain in the ass to decode the downlink data. I used to listen to my geek buddies at work piss and moan about it all the time. The spacecraft status and scientific data gets "commutated" into the stream using an obtuse, totally bizarre scheme that would make a pretty good encryption algorithm. It was based on a horrible mechanical kludge that inserted serial data at what appeared to me to be random intervals but really wasn't. Working on the telemetry software drove people to drink, do drugs, write bad checks, cheat on their wife, etc.
If ya want a great introduction to spaceflight basics, there is a totally killer tutorial used for training new DSN operations people at:
http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/basics/
Very cool stuff if you're a space geek...