Pioneer 10 spacecraft falls silent after nearly 31 years

Associated Press | February 25, 2003

[HAL9000]

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Pioneer 10, the first spacecraft to venture out of the solar system, has fallen silent after traveling billions of miles from Earth on a mission that has lasted nearly 31 years, NASA said Tuesday.

What was apparently the spacecraft's last signal was received Jan. 22 by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Deep Space Network. At the time, Pioneer 10 was 7.6 billion miles from Earth; the signal, traveling at the speed of light, took 11 hours and 20 minutes to arrive.

The signal and the two previous signals were very faint. The Deep Space Network heard nothing from Pioneer 10 during a final attempt at contact on Feb. 7. No more attempts are planned.

Pioneer 10 was launched March 2, 1972, on a 21-month mission. It became the first spacecraft to pass through the asteroid belt and the first to obtain close-up images of Jupiter. In 1983, it became the first manmade object to leave the solar system when it passed the orbit of distant Pluto.

Although Pioneer 10's mission officially ended in 1997, scientists continued to track the TRW Inc.-built spacecraft as part of a study of communication technology for NASA's future Interstellar Probe mission. Pioneer 10 hasn't relayed telemetry data since April 27.

"It was a workhorse that far exceeded its warranty, and I guess you could say we got our money's worth," said Larry Lasher, Pioneer 10 project manager at NASA's Ames Research Center.

Pioneer 10 carries a gold plaque engraved with a message of goodwill and a map showing the Earth's location in the solar system. The spacecraft continues to coast toward the star Aldebaran in the constellation Taurus. It will take 2 million years to reach it.

On the Net:

Pioneer 10: spaceprojects.arc.nasa.gov/Space_Projects/pioneer/PNhome.html

[seams2me]

Kind of like going online, and posting your email address everywhere?

[RadioAstronomer]

Kind of like going online, and posting your email address everywhere?

Only if your email takes 40,000 years to get anywhere! :-)

[Wondervixen]

I nominate Martin Sheen & Janeane Garofalo...They're from those parts anyway, so it'll be like a visit home.

[stands2reason]

Good. I'm not the only prevert that noticed that. :-)

[e_engineer]

If he was French, both hands would be in the air.

Might be German though, there was thread about Germany insisting that the "standard" EU condom was too large.

[e_engineer]

You are very naughty. Just because they are instantaneous, doesn't make subspace waves "better". Would you say that a top fuel dragster is better than a minivan? Not unless you live exactly 1/4 mile from the grocery store. It's the same problem with subspace waves - they get there fast but there is no "cargo" space. To host a single porn site you would need to allocate over 42,000 subspace channels. Everyone knows this is why subspace has been a commercial failure from day one.

[SunkenCiv]

Au revoir.