Pioneer 10

Pioneer 10 (Pioneer-F) was the first spacecraft to travel through the asteroid belt, which it entered on July 15, 1972 and to make direct observations of Jupiter, which it passed by on December 3, 1973. 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. By some definitions, Pioneer 10 has become the first artificial object to leave the solar system (third cosmic velocity). It is surely the first human-built object to have been set upon a trajectory leading out of the solar system. 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

Approved 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.^[1]

Pioneer 10 was managed as part of the Pioneer program out of NASA Ames Research Center and was built by TRW.^[2] It was light, at only 260 kg--30 and 27 kg of which were instruments and fuel, respectively.^[3] 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.^[4]

Pioneer 10 was fitted with a plaque to serve as a message for extraterrestrial life, in the event of its discovery.

Instruments

Instruments on the Pioneer 10 probe included:

• Helium Vector Magnetometer
• Plasma Analyzer
• Charged Particle Instrument
• Cosmic Ray Telescope
• Geiger Tube Telescope
• Trapped Radiation Detector
• Meteoroid Detector
• Asteroid-Meteoroid Experiment
• Ultraviolet Photometer
• Imaging Photopolarimeter
• Infrared Radiometer

Mission

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 contact

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.^[5]

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 10.^[6]

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 10 about 2 million years to reach it.^[7]

Timeline

• March 3, 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 10.

Pioneer anomaly

Main article: 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

Pioneer 10 Construction.jpg Pioneer 10 in the final stage of construction	Launch of Pioneer 10	P10A5.jpg Jupiter by Pioneer 10 (Image A5)	Pioneer 10 A7.jpg Close-up image of Jupiter by Pioneer 10 (Image A7)
P10A28.jpg Jupiter by Pioneer 10 (Image A28)	P10A50.jpg Jupiter by Pioneer 10 (Image A50)	P10A51.jpg Jupiter by Pioneer 10 (Image A51)	Pioneer plaque.svg The plaque on board the Pioneer spacecraft

Fictional references

• Pioneer 10 was used for target practice and easily destroyed by a Klingon Bird of Prey in the movie Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.
• Pioneer 10 was also seen in episode 1.12 of Futurama in a quick pull from Earth to the planet Omicron Persei 8.
• Pioneer 10 was mentioned in L. Ron Hubbard's novel Battlefield Earth. The race that invaded earth, the Psychlos, found the plaque on board the spacecraft, guiding them to Earth. Apparently the plaque was made of a metal that was very valuable on the galactic commodity market; the Pioneer plaque is, in fact, made of gold-anodized aluminum. The novel begins in the year 3000, a millennium after finding Pioneer 10 and the subsequent invasion of Earth.

References

See also

• Unmanned space missions
• Pioneer plaque
• Pioneer 11
• Voyager program
• Cassini probe
• S band

External links

• Pioneer Project Archive Page
• Pioneer 10 Profile by NASA's Solar System Exploration
• NSSDC Pioneer 10 page
• Pioneer Odyssey, NASA SP-396, 1977 - This is an entire book about the Pioneer 10 and 11 project, with all pictures and diagrams, on-line! Scroll down to click on the "Table of Contents" link.
• PIONEER 10 - Canadian rock band of same name.
• Mark Wolverton's The Depths of Space online
• A distant Pioneer whispers to Earth - CNN article, Dec. 19, 2002
• 2005 Pioneer Anomaly Conference - Mentions March 4, 2006 Contact Attempt

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