Posted on 02/25/2003 4:51:06 PM PST by 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
And the woman would have her mouth open and finger shaking at the man ...
(ducking)
We sure do. Basically, the Sun moves through the galaxy at about 220 km/sec. The bow shock is created in the direction of motion and is the place where there is a pressure balance point between the Interstellar medium and the Interplanetary medium. Magnetic fields get involved, so its a little more complex than that, but that's the general idea. The tail is formed opposite of the direction of motion. There was a really great Hubble pic of a bow shock in Orion on the Astronomy Picture of the Day on this site a few weeks back. A very striking photo. If I remember correctly from my grad school days, I don't think the tail is as big as the picture dictates, I think the scale is a bit off.
Despite the fact that it is mostly boring dust, molecules and atoms, the Local Interstellar medium is more interesting than the field in general. Did you know that the Solar System lies in a region slightly more dense than the surrounding material, which is a vacuum called the Local Bubble? The Local Interstellar Map is a good idea where everything lies within a thousand light years or so. The bow shock in your picture is too small to be on that map, but it is in the direction of the arrow, and the tail is in the opposite direction.
From here http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/sso/cool/pioneer10/general/amonetxt.html
Now if you go to the next slide, we see an Artist's rendition of the heliospheric boundary. This is the next mission, try to find out where they are. The heliopause in the center there is a meeting surface of the solar wind and that region outside the influences of the sun where interstellar space begins. The interstellar space is of unknown composition, really. But it does contain energyic flow and particles whose cosmic flow, as indicated here by the Galactic cosmic rays, have been detected as far inward as the earth and Venus. The solar wind is a flow of gases that, from the generation by the sun, it's a plasma subatomic particle, and it travels at the speed of 1,600,000 kilometers per hour or 1 million miles per hour. It undergoes a solar wind termination shock somewhere between originating and the heliopause, in which the flow goes from subsonic -- supersonic very abruptly to subsonic. And we see that the motion, in this picture right to left, there is a shock and it goes downstream.
There are a few other spacecraft doing the search, Voyager 1 and 2, but Pioneer 10 is unique as being the only spacecraft in the downstream direction. Unique also at this moment, because it's the farthest away.
Before we launched Pioneer 10, we felt that the extent of the solar wind was perhaps five times the effect -- fell off about at the distance five times the distance from the sun as the earth, or five AU, astronomical units, that is the distance between the sun and earth. 150 million kilometers or 193 million miles. The outermost planet is at about 40 AU. Pioneer 10 is now at 65 AU. And we have yet to find the heliospheric boundaries, but we feel we are getting close. Scientists now estimate that these boundaries are anywhere from 70 AU to 120 AU.
this was from a conference a few years ago.
I am most likely out of date on this subject.
Mystery force tugs distant probes
"By studying the Doppler shift (the "stretching") of the radio signals from the probe, scientists have been able to calculate how fast the craft is travelling. Since 1980, its trajectory has been mapped in very great detail.
The puzzle is that Pioneer 10 is slowing more quickly than it should. "
I thought this the most promising mystery in ages.
But without the signal there won't be any doppler-shift info on it's speed.
A 1998 Los Alamos release
"...the anomalous motions of these spacecraft are so small that the researchers had to consider numerous possible causes: perturbations from the gravitational attraction of planets and smaller bodies in the solar system; radiation pressure, the tiny transfer of momentum when photons impact the spacecraft; general relativity; interactions between the solar wind and the spacecraft; possible corruption to the radio Doppler data; wobbles and other changes in Earth's rotation; outgassing or thermal radiation from the spacecraft; and several others.
The researchers have so far not found that any of these effects can account for the size and direction of the anomalous acceleration.
After exhausting the list of possible "normal" explanations, the researchers looked at possible modifications to the attractive force of gravity or the possible influence or non-ordinary matter, or "dark" matter.
The dark matter explanation didn't hold up because so much matter would have been required to create the measured spacecraft acceleration it would have affected motions of other bodies in the solar system.
Looking at other mathematical representations for gravitational interactions also "come up against a hard experimental wall," the researchers wrote: namely that the gravitational effect would also be seen in planetary motions, especially for Earth and Mars... "
I've got a bad feeling about this.
It's probably affected by the Great Attractor (Things out there are rushing toward it. No-one knows what 'it' is, intriguing.)
no no no. That was Voyager. Vee-jer.
Your eyes are radio recievers. The rods and cones are antennae.
I remember that story!
Thanks! I have popped over to them off and on these past few weeks. My specialty is Mission Control. I have been fortunate enough to work on the ATLO (Assembly Test & Launch Operations) team at the Cape, Space Station, and Interplanetary. :-)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.