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Pioneer 10 |
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Pioneer 10 (Pioneer-F) was the first spacecraft to travel through the asteroid belt and to make direct observations of Jupiter. 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 (constellation). By some definitions, Pioneer 10 has become the first artificial object to leave the solar system (third cosmic velocity). 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) Pioneer probe design Pioneer 10 was managed as part of a 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. InstrumentsInstruments on the Pioneer 10 probe included:
MissionPioneer 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 contactThe 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.[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 about 2 million years to reach it.[7] Timeline) Pioneer 10 mission
) Current location and trajectories of Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft Pioneer anomalyAnalysis 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
Fictional references
References1. ^ William E. Burrows, Exploring Space, (New York: Random House, 1990), p. 266-8. 2. ^ NASA mission profile 3. ^ Ibid., p. 271. 4. ^ Ibid., pp. 271-2. 5. ^ "This Month in History", Smithsonian magazine, June, 2003. 6. ^ The final attempt to contact Pioneer 10 7. ^ Spacecraft escaping the Solar System See also
External links
spacecraft is a vehicle or device designed for spaceflight. On a sub-orbital spaceflight, a spacecraft enters outer space but then returns to the planetary surface (such as Earth) without making a complete orbit. ..... Click the link for more information. asteroid belt is the region of the Solar System located roughly between the orbits of the planets Mars and Jupiter where 98.5% of the known minor planets' orbits can be found. ..... Click the link for more information. Jupiter This processed color image of Jupiter was produced in 1990 by the U.S. Geological Survey from a Voyager image captured in 1979. The colors have been enhanced to bring out detail. ..... Click the link for more information. Location: Merritt Island, Florida, USA Coordinates: _ ] Area: 1325 acres[] Built/Founded: 1950+[1] Added to NRHP: April 16, 1984 ..... Click the link for more information. Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Launch Complex 36 (LC-36) was a launch complex at Cape Canaveral, Merritt Island, Florida. The complex was used for the Atlas rocket between 1962 and 2005. ..... Click the link for more information. March 2 is the 1st day of the year (2nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 0 days remaining. Events
..... Click the link for more information. 19th century - 20th century - 21st century 1940s 1950s 1960s - 1970s - 1980s 1990s 2000s 1969 1970 1971 - 1972 - 1973 1974 1975 Year 1972 (MCMLXXII ..... Click the link for more information. Aldebaran is the brightest star in the constellation Taurus and one of the brightest stars in the nighttime sky. It has the Bayer designation Alpha Tauri. Because of its location in the head of Taurus, it has historically been called the Bull's Eye. ..... Click the link for more information. Taurus Click for larger image List of stars in Taurus Abbreviation: Tau Genitive: Tauri Symbology: the Bull Right ascension: 4 h Declination: +15 Area: 797 sq. deg. ..... Click the link for more information. escape velocity is the speed where the kinetic energy of an object is equal in magnitude to its potential energy in a gravitational field. It is commonly described as the speed needed to "break free" from a gravitational field; however, this is not true for objects under ..... Click the link for more information. Oort cloud (ort, IPA: /ɔrt/, alternatively the Öpik-Oort Cloud (/ˈøpɪk/: as ..... Click the link for more information. Pioneer 11 was the second mission (after its sister probe Pioneer 10) to investigate Jupiter and the outer solar system and the first to explore the planet Saturn and its main rings. ..... Click the link for more information. asteroid belt is the region of the Solar System located roughly between the orbits of the planets Mars and Jupiter where 98.5% of the known minor planets' orbits can be found. ..... Click the link for more information. NASA Ames Research Center (ARC) is a NASA facility located at Moffett Federal Airfield, which covers 43 acres at the borders of the cities of Mountain View and Sunnyvale in California. This research center is most commonly called NASA Ames. ..... Click the link for more information.
TRW Incorporated was an American corporation involved in a number of businesses, mostly defense-related, but including automotive, aerospace and credit reporting. ..... Click the link for more information. A radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) is a simple electrical generator which obtains its power from radioactive decay. In such a device, the heat released by the decay of a suitable radioactive material is converted into electricity by the Seebeck effect using an ..... Click the link for more information. Plutonium 238, is a radioactive isotope of plutonium with a half-life of 87.7 years and is a very powerful alpha emitter. Because of its high level of alpha activity, it is used for radioisotope thermoelectric generators and radioisotope heater units. ..... Click the link for more information. Radiation as used in physics, is energy in the form of waves or moving subatomic particles. Radiation can be classified as ionizing or non-ionizing radiation, depending on its effect on atomic matter. ..... Click the link for more information. The Pioneer plaques are a pair of gold anodised aluminium plaques which were placed on board the Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 spacecraft, featuring a pictorial message from humanity, in case either Pioneer 10 or 11 are intercepted by extraterrestrial beings. ..... Click the link for more information. Extraterrestrial life is life originating outside of the Earth. It is the subject of astrobiology, and its existence remains theoretical. There is no evidence of extraterrestrial life that has been widely accepted by the scientific community. ..... Click the link for more information. A magnetometer is a scientific instrument used to measure the strength and/or direction of the magnetic field in the vicinity of the instrument. Earth's magnetism varies from place to place and differences in the Earth's magnetic field (the magnetosphere) can be caused by ..... Click the link for more information. Plasma may refer to:
..... Click the link for more information. In physics, a charged particle is a particle with an electric charge. It may be either a subatomic particle or an ion. A collection of charged particles, or even a gas containing a proportion of charged particles, is called a plasma, which is called the ..... Click the link for more information. Cosmic rays are energetic particles originating from space that impinge on Earth's atmosphere. Almost 90% of all the incoming cosmic ray particles are protons, about 9% are helium nuclei (alpha particles) and about 1% are electrons. ..... Click the link for more information. The Geiger Tube Telescope is a scientific instrument that measures the intensities, energy spectra, and angular distribution of energetic electrons and protons in interplanetary space and near Jupiter and Saturn. ..... Click the link for more information. meteoroid is a small sand to boulder-sized particle of debris in the Solar system. The visible path of a meteoroid that enters Earth's (or another body's) atmosphere is a meteor, commonly called a "shooting star" or "falling star". Many meteors are part of a meteor shower. ..... Click the link for more information. Ultraviolet (UV) light is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength shorter than that of visible light, but longer than soft X-rays. It is so named because the spectrum starts with wavelengths slightly shorter than the wavelengths humans identify as the color violet ..... Click the link for more information. In the broadest sense, a photometer is any instrument used to measure illuminance or irradiance. As applied in industrial photometry, a "photometer" is the general term covering instruments for detecting:
..... Click the link for more information. A radiometer is a device used to measure the radiant flux or power in electromagnetic radiation. Although the term is perhaps most generally applied to a device which measures infrared radiation, it can also be applied to detectors operating any wavelength in the electromagnetic ..... Click the link for more information. Jupiter This processed color image of Jupiter was produced in 1990 by the U.S. Geological Survey from a Voyager image captured in 1979. The colors have been enhanced to bring out detail. ..... Click the link for more information. This article is copied from an article on Wikipedia® - the free encyclopedia created and edited by online user community. The text was not checked or edited by anyone on our staff. Although the vast majority of the Wikipedia® encyclopedia articles provide accurate and timely information please do not assume the accuracy of any particular article. This article is distributed under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License. How to thank TFD for its existence? Tell a friend about us, add a link to this page, add the site to iGoogle, or visit webmaster's page for free fun content. |
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| The Pioneer 10 spacecraft was launched in 1972 to study Jupiter and has kept going ever since. Pioneer 10, launched in 1972, became the first spacecraft to fly by Jupiter and travel through the asteroid belt. Pioneer 10 represents the best of 1960s technology, when transistors were still young and ``solid state circuitry'' was still visible to the naked eye. |
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Pioneer 10
