Pioneer 10

  On March 2, 1972, Pioneer 10 was launched. It made it’s closest approach to Jupiter on December 3, 1973.Then on January 23, 2003, Earth received Pioneer 10’s last signal. On February 7, 2003, Pioneer 10’s last contact attempt, NASA’s deep space network didn't detect a signal. Today, Pioneer 10 is heading towards Aldebaran.

    The spacecraft body was mounted behind a 2.74-m-diameter parabolic dish antenna witch was 46cm deep. The spacecraft structure was a 36-cm-deep flat equipment compartment; both the top and the bottom being regular hexagons. The sides were about 70 cm long. One side was attached to a smaller compartment witch carried the scientific experiments. The high-gain antenna feed was situated on three struts that projected forwards 1.2 m. A medium-gain antenna was topped with that feed. A low-gain antenna extended about 0.76 m in back of the equipment compartment and was mounted underneath the high-gain antenna. Power for the spacecraft was obtained by four SNAP-19 radioisotope thermonuclear generators (RTG), that were held 3 meters from the center of the spacecraft by the 2 three-rod trusses 120 deg apart. A third boom extended  6.6 meters from the experiment compartment to hold the magnetometer away from the spacecraft.

    Earth received Pioneer 10 spacecraft’s last signal. It’s last and weak signal was on January 23, 2003. Pioneer 10’s last three signals had no telemetry received and were very faint. NASA’s deep space network, or DSN, did not detect a signal on February 2, 2003 witch was during the last contact attempt.  Pioneer 10 was launched on March 2, 1972 and was the first spacecraft to travel through the asteroid belt. It was also the first to make direct observations and obtain close up images of Jupiter. Pioneer 10 is now 7.8 billion miles away. The spacecraft will continue to silently ride through deep space into interstellar space, generally heading towards Aldabaran witch is about 68 light years away.

Picture of Jupiter