Right around this day in 1983 the Pioneer 10 spacecraft, enroute to the star system Aldebaran, said goodbye to the Solar System. If all goes well, the tiny spacecraft should reach its goal in about two million years. To make this event even more exciting, in 1997 astronomers think they discovered a planet orbiting Aldebaran. How exciting is that?
Pioneer 10 (Pioneer-F) was the first spacecraft to travel through the asteroid belt and to make direct observations of Jupiter. It was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Launch Complex 36A on March 2, 1972. Pioneer 10 is heading in the direction of Aldebaran, located in Taurus (constellation). By some definitions, Pioneer 10 has become the first artificial object to leave the solar system (third cosmic velocity). However, it still has not passed the heliopause or Oort cloud.
Its objectives were to study the interplanetary and planetary magnetic fields; solar wind parameters; cosmic rays; transition region of the heliosphere; neutral hydrogen abundance; distribution, size, mass, flux, and velocity of dust particles; Jovian aurorae; Jovian radio waves; atmosphere of Jupiter and some of its satellites, particularly Io; and to photograph Jupiter and its satellites. Construction
Pioneer probe designApproved in 1969, Pioneer 10 and its sister ship Pioneer 11 were designed to live up to their names: as first-time explorers intended to both gather data and report on conditions in the asteroid belt and in Jupiter-space; how they fared would be critical in the planning and technology of any future missions.
Pioneer 10 was managed as part of a Pioneer program out of NASA Ames Research Center and was built by TRW. It was light, at only 260 kg--30 and 27 kg of which were instruments and fuel, respectively. Like the Voyagers, it was powered by radioisotope thermoelectric generators (SNAP-19s) containing plutonium-238, which provided 155W at launch, and 140W by the Jupiter flyby. The RTGs were mounted well away from the body, to prevent their radiation from interfering with the spacecraft's instruments.
Pioneer 10 was fitted with a plaque to serve as a message for extraterrestrial life, in the event of its discovery.
Pioneer 10 became the first spacecraft to encounter Jupiter in December, 1973. The spacecraft then made valuable scientific investigations in the outer regions of our solar system until the end of its mission on March 31, 1997. Further contactThe 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 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 structural failure of the craft.
The last, very weak signal from Pioneer 10 was received on January 23, 2003, when it was 7.5 billion miles (12 billion kilometres) from Earth.
A contact attempt on February 7, 2003 was not successful.
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 at roughly 2.6 AUs per year. If Aldebaran had zero relative velocity, it would take Pioneer about 2 million years to reach it.
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