pioneer 10 (The Lost Space craft)

was the first spacecraft to travel through the astroid belt, which it entered on July 15th 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, pioneer10 and its sister ship pioneer11 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.Pioneer 10 was managed as part of the Pioneer program out of NASA Ames Research Center and was built by TRW. It was light, at only 260 kg--30 and 27 kg of which were instruments and fuel, respectively. Like the Voyagers, it was powered by radioscopic thermoelectric generators (SNAP-19s) containing plutinium-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.Pioneer 10 was fitted with a plaque to serve as a message for extraterrestial life, in the event of its.

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

The Pioneer 10's weak signal continued to be tracked by the Deep Space Network as part of a new advanced concept study of choas 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.A contact attempt on Febuary 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. Pioneer 10 is heading in the direction of the star Aldebarn 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.

PIONEER ANOLAMY

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 anolomy.