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Pioneer 10 Thirty Years Into Interstellar Voyage

Pioneer 10 distance from Sun : 84.33 AU Speed relative to the Sun: 12.199 km/sec (27,290 mph) Distance from Earth: 12.47 billion kilometers (7.75 billion miles) (Round-trip Light Time = 23 hours 7 minutes)

Moffett Field - Dec 03, 2003
Thirty years ago today on 3 December 1973, Pioneer 10 made its closest encounter to Jupiter passing within 81,000 miles of the cloud tops. This historic event marked humans' first approach to Jupiter and opened the way for exploration of the outer solar system - for Voyager to tour the outer planets, for Ulysses to break out of the ecliptic, for Galileo to investigate Jupiter and its satellites, and for Cassini to go to Saturn and probe Titan.

During its Jupiter encounter, Pioneer 10 imaged the planet and its moons, and took measurements of Jupiter's magnetosphere, radiation belts, magnetic field, atmosphere, and interior. These measurements of the intense radiation environment near Jupiter were crucial in designing the Voyager and Galileo spacecraft.

The power source on Pioneer 10 finally degraded to the point where the signal to Earth dropped below the threshold for detection in its latest contact attempt on 7 February 2003. No more attempts at contact are planned at this time.

The previous three contacts had very faint signals with no telemetry received. Pioneer's last, very weak signal was received on 23 January 2003. The last time a Pioneer 10 contact returned telemetry data was on 27 April 2002.

  • Pioneer 10 Still Beats But No Lock
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  • Distant Pioneer Sought Once More
  • Pioneer 10 Lives!
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    Space Rights Proposal To Be Launched At International Lunar Conference
     Waikoloa Beach - Nov 17, 2003
    From Sunday November 16 through to Nov 22, the International Lunar Conference 2003 is being held in Hawaii with the stated purpose of getting us back to the Moon. Many countries and space agencies are sending large delegations, and among the gueats speakers are Moon astronauts John Young and Harrison Schmitt. John Young, still working at NASA, has gained much attention for his statement that "Single-planet Species do Not Last".

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