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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."
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!
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.
No, they meant that Pluto has an eccentric orbit, which crosses the orbit of Neptune. Between 1979 and 1999, Pluto was the 8th planet from the sun, and Neptune the 9th.
Everyone knows that pioneer 10 was destroyed by Klingons in some harmless target practice!
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.
So that's it! The RIAA is trying to protect Earth from the Mighty Force of P'Eer 2 P'Eer!
Fellowship 9/11
Um... hello? Have you not heard of Cassini? Sure, there may have been some fly-bys of Saturn and its moons in the past, but certainly none that are going to be spending a few years in the area. If the latest group of pictures from Phoebe are any indication...
Troll.
... 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
I guess attempting to fly through a comet's tail and return samples to earth isn't very impressive. Nor is landing a probe on a comet. Or on a moon of Saturn. Or taking samples of a near-earth asteroid and returning them to earth.
There is plenty going on. Not as much as I would like, but still a lot more than most people think.
Actually it didn't have a digital camera.
Pioneer 10/11 were spin-stabilizied spacecrafts. With each revolution there was a light sensitive aperture assembly that generated a scanline. The scanlines were reassembled dirtside to create the image. When Pioneer 11 reached Saturn it moving so fast that the raw planet image was shaped like a football. These raw images were sent to the Univ. of Arizona in real-time for correction. Now, we'd just use Photoshop or whatever but in 1979 that sorta image enhancement was really state of the art.
Yeah, Pioneer was primitive compared to Voyager but it did more basic science. Voyager was mostly just an expensive ass camera platform. Good for PR mostly.
Looking back on my 30 years as a geek, working on Pioneer was the most fun job I ever had.
buck
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
Seeing that it looks like you know quite a bit about pioneer and I can not find much about the sub systems online I have a question: What is going on with the Pioneer 10/11. I know that RTG wattage is to low to power the transmitter, but is there any part of it that is still 'on'? 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 and how data was stored and sent to earth?
Hi - why can't NASA try to use some nearer spacecratt (Cassini, Mars Express etc.) to communicate with Pioneer 10?
Your absolutely correct. It gets down to the basic problem in space science and that is how to market information to the public. What gets me is that I can turn on the discovery channel and watch hour after hour of Palio this and Volcano that (all very important areas of research, I'm not dogging them). Why arn't there more programs made that describe the current NASA missions, design and development phases, the mission it self. Some of the great science that comes from it etc.. I guess it comes down to the fact that the Fe/O ratio is just not as cool as a Raptor claw.
"Truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations"
The spin-flip transition has a wavelength of 21cm. Next to the people is the binary number 8, 8x21=168cm, the approximate height of a human. Also this can be used to make sure the scale is correct, because Pioneer is show to scale behind the humans.
The period of the spin-flip transition is around 1420(Mhz)^-1. The off burst pattern is actually a map of the Sol system's location in relation to 14 pulsars, whose periods are compaired to that of molecular hydrogen's transition by way of binary. By knowing this the recieving society is supposed to look in the sky and find some of the pulsars with those frequencies and be able to locate us.
Pretty nifty use of math and science I think, but perhaps including an example of binary counting would have been a good idea. I forget what the binary near the planets signifies, either distance or mass, I can't recall which. Probably distance, because that diagram is not to scale.
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.