Pioneer 10 Current Status Pioneer Anomaly External Links

Famed as the most remote object ever made by man, at last contact Pioneer 10 was over 7.6 billion miles away from Earth. (Until February 17, 1998, the heliocentric radial distance of Pioneer 10 had been greater than that of any other man-made object. But later on that date, Voyager 1The Voyager 1 spacecraft is an unmanned probe of the outer solar system. It is the most distant man-made object, still moving further away, and expected to keep on transmitting into the 2020s. It was originally planned as Mariner 11 of the Mariner program's heliocentric radial distance , in the approximate apex direction, equaled that of Pioneer 10 at 69.419 AU. Thereafter, Voyager 1The Voyager 1 spacecraft is an unmanned probe of the outer solar system. It is the most distant man-made object, still moving further away, and expected to keep on transmitting into the 2020s. It was originally planned as Mariner 11 of the Mariner program's distance will exceed that of Pioneer 10 at the approximate rate of 1.016 AU per year).

The plaqueOn board the unmanned spacecraft Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 is a plaque with a pictoral message from mankind. The plaque shows the figures of a man and a woman along with several symbols that are designed to provide information about the origin of the spac on board the Pioneer spacecraft

The spacecraft made valuable scientific investigations in the outer regions of our solar system until the end of its mission on March 31March 31 is the 90th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (91st in Leap years). There are 275 days remaining. Events 307 After divorcing his wife Minerva, Constantine marries Fausta, the daughter of the retired Roman Emperor Maximian. 1774 American R, 19971997 was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar), and was designated the International Year of the Reef''. Events January January 3 NBC's Today Show Bryant Gumbel signs off for the last time January 8 Mister Rogers receives a star on t. The Pioneer 10's weak signal continued to be tracked by the Deep Space NetworkDeep Space Network DSN is an international network of radio antennas that supports interplanetary spacecraft missions, and radio and radar astronomy observations for the exploration of the solar system and the universe. The network also supports selected as part of a new advanced concept study of chaos theory. Before 1997 the probe was used in the training of flight controllers on how to acquire radio signals from space.

Pioneer 10 is headed in the direction of the star Aldebaran in the constellation Taurus. It will take Pioneer over 2 million years to reach it.

1 Current Status

On Friday February 28, 2002, scientists at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)'s Deep Space Network in Goldstone, California, sent a signal to the spacecraft to see if it was still functioning. Pioneer 10 was eleven light hours away at this point, and so it was twenty-two hours later when researchers at the network's facility in Madrid, Spain, heard Pioneer's response.

A later attempt in December 2002 received a faint response, which was too weak to decode. Pioneer 10's final signal (after two previous failures) was received on January 22, 2003. As of February 25, 2003, NASA came to the conclusion that the craft's radioisotope power source was no longer functioning well enough for further contact with Earth. NASA's Deep Space Network did not detect a signal during the last contact attempt February 7, 2003. The previous three contacts, including the January 22 signal, were very faint with no telemetry received. The last time a Pioneer 10 contact returned telemetry data was April 27, 2002. NASA has no additional contact attempts planned for Pioneer 10.

As of February 5, 2002, Pioneer 10 was 79.66 AU from the Sun. The most recent cosmic ray data from the spacecraft, received on May 19, 2001, showed that the vehicle had not yet reached the heliopause.

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2 Pioneer anomaly

Main article: Pioneer anomaly

Analysis of the radio tracking data from the Pioneer 10/11 spacecraft at distances between 20 - 70 AU from the Sun has consistently indicated the presence of an anomalous, small Doppler frequency drift. The drift can be interpreted as being due to a constant acceleration of directed towards the Sun. Although it is suspected that there is a systematic origin to the effect, none has been found. As a result, the nature of this anomaly has become of growing interest.

3 External links

Pioneer Project Home Page
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.
A distant Pioneer whispers to Earth - CNN article, Dec. 19, 2002

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