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Pioneer 10 was the first spacecraft to travel through the asteroid belt, and was the first spacecraft to make direct observations of Jupiter. It was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Launch Complex 36A on March 2, 1972. By some definitions, Pioneer 10 has become the first artificial object to leave the solar system. However, it still has not passed the heliopause or Oort cloud.
Construction Pioneer 10 was built by TRW. Its central computer was based on an Intel 4004 processor.• Pioneer 10 was fitted with a plaque to serve as a message for extraterrestrial life, in the event of its discovery. Mission The spacecraft made valuable scientific investigations in the outer regions of our solar system until the end of its mission on March 31, 1997. !! This article needs details of the mission here. !! Further Contact The Pioneer 10's weak signal continued to be tracked by the Deep Space Network as part of a new advanced concept study of chaos theory. After 1997 the probe was used in the training of flight controllers on how to acquire radio signals from space. The last, very weak, signal from Pioneer 10 was received on January 23, 2003. A contact attempt on February 7, 2003 was not successful. The last successful reception of telemetry was on April 27, 2002; subsequent signals were barely strong enough to detect. Loss of contact was probably due to a combination of increasing distance and the spacecraft's steadily weakening power source, rather than failure of the craft. One final attempt was made on the evening of March 4, 2006, the last time the antenna would be correctly aligned with Earth. No response was received from Pioneer. Pioneer 10 is heading in the direction of the star Aldebaran in the constellation Taurus. Traveling at roughly 2.6 AUs per year, it will take Pioneer over 2 million years to reach it. Timeline March 2, 1972 Spacecraft launched. July 15, 1972 Entered the Asteroid Belt. December 3, 1973 Pioneer 10 sent back the first close-up images of Jupiter. June 13 1983 Pioneer 10 passed the orbit of Neptune, the outermost planet. (Although Pluto was considered to be a planet at the time, it was closer to the sun than Neptune due to its highly eccentric orbit.) March 31, 1997 End of mission. February 17, 1998 Famed for a time as the most remote object ever made by man, at last contact Pioneer 10 was over 7.60 billion miles away from Earth. (Until February 17, 1998, the distance of Pioneer 10 from the sun had been greater than that of any other man-made object. But on that date, Voyager 1's distance from the sun, in the approximate apex direction, equalled that of Pioneer 10 at 69.419 AU. From that date on, Voyager 1's distance continues to exceed that of Pioneer 10 at the approximate rate of 1.016 AU per year.) March 2, 2002 Successful reception of telemetry. 39 minutes of clean data received from a distance of 79.83 AU. April 27, 2002 The last successful reception of telemetry. 33 minutes of clean data received from a distance of 80.22 AU. January 23, 2003 The last, very weak, signal from Pioneer 10 was received. Subsequent signals were barely strong enough to detect. February 7, 2003 Unsuccessful contact attempt. December 30, 2005 Pioneer 10 was 89.7 AU away from the Sun. March 4, 2006 Final attempt at contact. No response was received from Pioneer. Pioneer anomaly Analysis of the radio tracking data from the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft at distances between 20–70 AU from the Sun has consistently indicated the presence of a small but anomalous Doppler frequency drift. The drift can be interpreted as due to a constant acceleration of (8.74 ± 1.33) × 10−10 m/s2 directed towards the Sun. Although it is suspected that there is a systematic origin to the effect, none has been found. As a result, there is growing interest in the nature of this anomaly. Gallery Image:Pioneer 10 Construction.jpg|Pioneer 10 in the final stage of construction Image:Launch of Pioneer 10.jpg|Launch of Pioneer 10 Image:P10A5.jpg|Jupiter by Pioneer 10 (Image A5) Image:Pioneer_10_A7.jpg|Close-up image of Jupiter by Pioneer 10 (Image A7) Image:P10A28.jpg|Jupiter by Pioneer 10 (Image A28) Image:P10A50.jpg|Jupiter by Pioneer 10 (Image A50) Image:P10A51.jpg|Jupiter by Pioneer 10 (Image A51) Image:PPlaqueLarge.png|The plaque on board the Pioneer spacecraft See also | ||||||||
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