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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."
...when it returns as V'Ger. ;)
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Everyone knows that pioneer 10 was destroyed by Klingons in some harmless target practice!
That's a very academic question, and although I could launch a debate about what counts as a planet and whether the Oort Cloud is properly part of the Solar System, it all comes down to the very non-scientific and uninteresting issue of definition. The point is this: Pioneer is really, really, really far. Even farther than Canada.
I can't ever imagine what a super-intelligent race could do with it.
I think it would make a dandy TV tray.
KFG
Lies! The odds of successfully navigating an astroid field are 3720 to 1!
Finkployd
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.
Pioneer 10 is not really dead, it is just so far away we can no longer hear it.
And so... old probes don't die. They just fade away.
Of course, the physicists will never guess that it's really the gravitational effects of huge surveying ships taking measurements for a hyperspatial express route . . .