Oh my, today exceeded my wildest expectations and then some. Not only was the Pioneer 10 prototype even more beautiful than I’d already believed, but its conservator Sharon Norquest was an equally beautiful inspiration.

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She generously gave us a morning of her time, allowing us to study the probe close up, to take photographs and audio recordings, and to share with us her insights in regard to her conservation work and to what brought her here. Her exceeding attention and care along with her imaginative perspectives was worth the trip alone. And the Pioneer 10 model – what a glittering, amazing thing. I’m not yet sure what I’m allowed to post online, so for now, a picture from the public viewing site of Sharon at work on the probe. Thank you Sharon and the Smithsonian for this incredible opportunity. More to follow once I’ve got my bearings.

• Pioneer 10 (originally designated Pioneer F) is an American space probe, launched in 1972 and weighing 258 kilograms (569 pounds), that completed the first mission to.
• Media in category 'Pioneer 10' The following 49 files are in this category, out of 49 total. Pioneer 10 - Pioneer 11 - mission patch - pioneer patch.jpg 435.

NASA/JPL UNMANNED MISSION PATCHES. NASA/JPL UNMANNED SPACE MISSIONS; Mariner 2: Mariner 4: Pioneer 10: Voyager: Viking: Galileo: Galileo. Juno mission to Jupiter.

The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum was a short hike from where the metro bus dropped us off. It is a grand place, and a Sunday jam packed with people. First thing I saw was where the Pioneer 10 model was supposed to be hanging from the ceiling along with these other historic crafts: And here is the exhibit of the probes, currently closed to the public. I am so glad I knew this in advance! We watched two IMAX movies, and the 3-D movie that takes viewers through the galaxy using images from the Hubble telescope was breathtaking.

The stars in their cocoons, the beautiful spiral galaxies, the nebulae clouds, made me want to travel through them forever. Though, eventually, one would reach complete darkness, and then I know my zen-like feeling would disappear. The Smithsonian has a gift shop that is three stories! On the third floor, in a corner featuring books and memorabilia of early space exploration, I found this – a framed stamp of Pioneer 11. That is as close as I have gotten on this trip to finding a souvenir dedicated to these probes. So I bought it.

What does the model of the Pioneer 10 and the spire of the White House have in common? They are both being restored. Oh, Pioneer 10, you could have been a pop can, a pie plate, a foil hot dog wrapper dropped in a puddle of water in front of the White House. Tomorrow the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center and the Pioneer 10 model! A sunny day, but the wind chill factor was definitely there. We took the metro bus into Washington, DC.

The suburbs and freeways soon became a bumper to bumper four lane highway, and just as we finished crossing the Potomac River with a view of the White House and the Washington Tower, our exit was blocked by a police car. After a fairly long chat with the policeman, the bus driver got back in and said, “Okay, ladies and gentlemen. Do me a favor. Close your eyes,” and did an excellent u-turn just after an underpass, getting us to our bus stop with ease. Well, actually we’re in Dulles, Virginia and the cab ride (very expensive!) from the Baltimore, Maryland airport to the hotel near the Dulles airport skirted the city, so all I’ve seen so far is freeways, though I did see the sign to the Stephen F. Udvar-Hazy Center – where the model of the probe resides!

The rather barren surroundings will help me stay focused on putting together the notes I’ve made and getting ready to see the probe on Monday. Tomorrow we are off to the Smithsonian and downtown Washington. Looking out the window, it’s clear we’re not at Anthony’s on the Beach anymore. What a difference a few hours’ flight makes. We both woke up this morning feeling a bit overteched (I know I was!) and underearthed; in fact, I was starting to feel a bit like the picture Wayne took of me yesterday: So we scrapped the tour we had booked at Kennedy Space Center and visited the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge instead. There, we soaked up the sounds of birds, baby alligators, wind, and water.

It felt regenerating to use a different kind of telescope/binoculars: And here, a baby alligator which makes an “erp, erp” sound. Tomorrow, we are off to Washington, DC and the Pioneer 10 model. Tomorrow we will see a launch, but it won’t be until late at night. Here it is today, getting itself ready for liftoff: You can see it in the middle of the four-stick candelabra (lightning strike diverters). Today I saw a simulation of the launch that went to the moon, and when the rockets fired, the flames and the nuclear-bomb-powered strength of it all took off, and my chair shook with the noise, I felt moved beyond description, and not just at our ambitions, but at the non-limits of our desire to be first, to be in control. It may not be that noble. One of the most surprising, and probably naive, realizations of this trip is that the Pioneer 10, and many of the other probes of its time, are, well, passe.

I couldn’t find a record or souvenir of them anywhere. It was all about the manned missions.

I think I can understand why NASA has chosen to make that their focus (aside from the space race ). I am a lyric poet; I write about my personal experiences of the sensory world. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were as close as any of us may get to knowing what it is like to be on the Moon. But we still, by our own intentions, have manipulated non-human-material objects to travel to places and experience them on our behalf. We sent the Pioneer 10 into interstellar space to help us. And now, it is on its own.

It has nothing to focus on and nothing to orbit. Posts navigation.

An artist's impression of a Pioneer spacecraft on its way to interstellar space. Contents. Mission background History Approved in February 1969, Pioneer 11 and its twin probe, were the first to be designed for exploring the. Yielding to multiple proposals throughout the 1960s, early mission objectives were defined as:.

Explore the beyond the orbit of Mars. Investigate the nature of the asteroid belt from the scientific standpoint and assess the belt's possible hazard to missions to the outer planets.

Explore the. Subsequent planning for an encounter with Saturn added many more goals:. Map the magnetic field of Saturn and determine its intensity, direction, and structure. Determine how many electrons and protons of various energies are distributed along the trajectory of the spacecraft through the Saturn system. Map the interaction of the Saturn system with the. Measure the temperature of Saturn's atmosphere and that of Titan, the largest satellite of Saturn. Determine the structure of the upper atmosphere of Saturn where molecules are expected to be electrically charged and form an ionosphere.

Map the thermal structure of by infrared observations coupled with data. Obtain spin-scan images of the in two colors during the encounter sequence and polarimetry measurements of the planet.

Probe the ring system and the atmosphere of Saturn with S-band radio occultation. Determine more precisely the masses of Saturn and its larger satellites by accurate observations of the effects of their gravitational fields on the motion of the spacecraft. As a precursor to the, verify the environment of the ring plane to find out where it may be safely crossed by the Mariner spacecraft without serious damage. Pioneer 11 was built by and managed as part of the. A backup unit, is currently on display in the 'Milestones of Flight' exhibit at the in.

Many elements of the mission proved to be critical in the planning of the.: 266–8 Spacecraft design The Pioneer 11 bus measured 36 centimeters (14 in) deep and with six 76-centimeter-long (30 in) panels forming the hexagonal structure. The bus housed propellant to control the orientation of the probe and eight of the twelve scientific instruments. The spacecraft had a mass of 260 kilograms.: 42 Attitude control and propulsion. Orientation of the spacecraft was maintained with six 4.5-, thrusters: pair one maintained a constant spin-rate of 4.8, pair two controlled the forward thrust, pair three controlled attitude.

Information for the orientation was provided by performing maneuvers to track Earth in its orbit, a able to reference, and two.: 42–43 Communications The space probe included a redundant system, one attached to the, the other to an omni-antenna and medium-gain antenna. Each transceiver was 8 watts and transmitted data across the using 2110 MHz for the uplink from Earth and 2292 MHz for the downlink to Earth with the tracking the signal.

Prior to transmitting data, the probe used a to allow in the received data on Earth.: 43 Power. Pioneer 11 used four SNAP-19 (RTGs) ( ). They were positioned on two three-rod trusses, each 3 meters (9 feet 10 inches) in length and 120 degrees apart.

This was expected to be a safe distance from the sensitive scientific experiments carried on board. Combined, the RTGs provided 155 watts at launch, and decayed to 140 W in transit to Jupiter. The spacecraft required 100 W to power all systems.: 44–45 Computer Much of the computation for the mission was performed on Earth and transmitted to the probe, where it was able to retain in memory, up to five commands of the 222 possible entries by ground controllers. The spacecraft included two command decoders and a command distribution unit, a very limited form of processor, to direct operations on the spacecraft. This system required that mission operators prepare commands long in advance of transmitting them to the probe. A data storage unit was included to record up to 6,144 of information gathered by the instruments.

The digital telemetry unit would then be used to prepare the collected data in one of the thirteen possible formats before transmitting it back to Earth.: 38 Scientific instruments Helium Vector ( HVM) Measured the fine structure of the interplanetary magnetic field, mapped the Jovian magnetic field, and provided magnetic field measurements to evaluate solar wind interaction with Jupiter. Principal investigator: Edward Smith / JPL.

Data:, Quadrispherical Analyzer Peered through a hole in the large dish-shaped antenna to detect particles of the solar wind originating from the Sun. Principal investigator: Aaron Barnes / NASA Ames Research Center.

Data:, Instrument ( CPI) Detected cosmic rays in the Solar System. Principal investigator: / University of Chicago. Data: Telescope ( CRT) Collected data on the composition of the cosmic ray particles and their energy ranges.

Principal investigator: / NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Data:, ( GTT). Surveyed the intensities, energy spectra, and angular distributions of electrons and protons along the spacecraft's path through the radiation belts of Jupiter and Saturn. Principal investigator: / University of Iowa. Data:, Trapped Detector ( TRD) Included an unfocused that detected the light emitted in a particular direction as particles passed through it recording electrons of energy, 0.5 to 12, an electron scatter detector for electrons of energy, 100 to 400 keV, and a minimum ionizing detector consisting of a solid-state diode that measured minimum ionizing particles (. 1995-11-30 Last signal received.: 61–94 Launch and trajectory The Pioneer 11 probe was launched on April 6, 1973 at 02:11:00 UTC, by the from at, Florida aboard an launch vehicle.

Its twin probe, had launched a year earlier on March 3, 1972. Pioneer 11 was launched on a trajectory directly aimed at Jupiter without any prior gravitational assists. In May 1974, Pioneer was retargeted to fly past Jupiter on a north-south trajectory enabling a Saturn flyby in 1979.

The maneuver used 17 pounds of propellant, lasted 42 minutes and 36 seconds and increased Pioneer 11's speed by 230 km/h. It also made two mid-course corrections, on April 11, 1973 and November 7, 1974. Encounter with Jupiter. Main article: Pioneer 11 flew past Jupiter in November and December 1974. During its closest approach, on December 2, it passed 42,828 kilometers (26,612 mi) above the cloud tops. The probe obtained detailed images of the, transmitted the first images of the immense polar regions, and determined the mass of Jupiter's moon.

Using the gravitational pull of Jupiter, a was used to alter the trajectory of the probe towards Saturn. On April 16, 1975, following the Jupiter encounter, the micrometer detector was turned off. Artist's impression of Pioneer 11 's flyby of Pioneer 11 passed by Saturn on September 1, 1979, at a distance of 21,000 km from Saturn's cloud tops. By this time and had already passed Jupiter and were also en route to Saturn, so it was decided to target Pioneer 11 to pass through the Saturn ring plane at the same position that the soon-to-come Voyager probes would use in order to test the route before the Voyagers arrived. If there were faint ring particles that could damage a probe in that area, mission planners felt it was better to learn about it via Pioneer.

Thus, Pioneer 11 was acting as a 'pioneer' in a true sense of the word; if danger were detected, then the Voyager probes could be rerouted further away from the rings, but missing the opportunity to visit Uranus and Neptune in the process. Pioneer 11 imaged and nearly collided with one of Saturn's small moons, passing at a distance of no more than 4,000 kilometers (2,500 mi). The object was tentatively identified as, a moon discovered the previous day from Pioneer 's imaging, and suspected from earlier observations by Earth-based telescopes.

After the flybys, it became known that there are two similarly-sized moons (Epimetheus and ) in the same orbit, so there is some uncertainty about which one was the object of Pioneer's near-miss. Pioneer 11 encountered Janus on September 1, 1979 at 14:52 at a distance of 2500 km and at 16:20 UTC the same day at 103000 km. Besides Epimetheus, instruments located another previously undiscovered small moon and an additional ring, charted Saturn's magnetosphere and magnetic field and found its planet-size moon, to be too cold for life. Hurtling underneath the ring plane, the probe sent back pictures of Saturn's rings.

The rings, which normally seem bright when observed from Earth, appeared dark in the Pioneer pictures, and the dark gaps in the rings seen from Earth appeared as bright rings. Media related to at Wikimedia Commons Interstellar Mission On February 23, 1990, Pioneer 11 became the 4th man-made object to pass beyond the orbit of the planets. NASA ends operations By 1995, Pioneer 11 could no longer power any of its detectors, so the decision was made to shut it down.

On September 29, 1995, NASA's, responsible for managing the project, issued a press release that began, 'After nearly 22 years of exploration out to the farthest reaches of the Solar System, one of the most durable and productive space missions in history will come to a close.' It indicated NASA would use its antennas to listen 'once or twice a month' for the spacecraft's signal, until 'some time in late 1996' when 'its transmitter will fall silent altogether.' NASA Administrator characterized Pioneer 11 as 'the little spacecraft that could, a venerable explorer that has taught us a great deal about the Solar System and, in the end, about our own innate drive to learn. Pioneer 11 is what NASA is all about – exploration beyond the frontier.' Besides announcing the end of operations, the dispatch provided a historical list of Pioneer 11 mission achievements.

NASA terminated routine contact with the spacecraft on September 30, 1995, but continued to make contact for about 2 hours every 2 to 4 weeks. Scientists received a few minutes of good engineering data on 24 November 1995 but then lost final contact once Earth permanently moved out of view of the spacecraft's antenna. It's signal became too faint to hear in 2002.

Current status. Simulated view of the position of Pioneer 11 as of 8 February 2012 showing spacecraft trajectory since launch On July 19, 2015, Pioneer 11 was 90.716 AU (1.35709 ×10 10 km; 8.4326 ×10 9 mi) from the Earth and 91.672 AU (1.37139 ×10 10 km; 8.5214 ×10 9 mi) from the Sun; and traveling at 11.376 km/s (25,450 mph) (relative to the Sun) and traveling outward at about 2.4 AU per year.

The spacecraft is heading in the direction of the constellation near the current position (August 2017) 18h 50m -8° 39.5' close to. Pioneer 11 has now been overtaken by the two Voyager probes, launched in 1977, and is now the most distant object built by humans. Pioneer anomaly. Main article: 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 frequency drift. The drift can be interpreted as due to a constant acceleration of (8.74 ± 1.33) × 10 −10 m/s 2 directed towards the Sun. Although it is suspected that there is a to the effect, none was found.

As a result, there is sustained interest in the nature of this so-called '. Extended analysis of mission data by Slava Turyshev and colleagues has determined the source of the anomaly to be asymmetric thermal radiation and the resulting thermal recoil force acting on the face of the Pioneers away from the Sun, and in July 2012 the group of researchers published their results in the scientific journal. Pioneer plaque. Main article: Pioneer 10 and 11 both carry a gold-anodized aluminum in the event that either spacecraft is ever found by intelligent lifeforms from other planetary systems. The plaques feature the nude figures of a human male and female along with several symbols that are designed to provide information about the origin of the spacecraft. Commemoration In 1991, Pioneer 11 was honored on one of 10 United States Postage Service stamps commemorating unmanned spacecraft exploring each of the then nine planets and the Moon. Pioneer 11 was the spacecraft featured with Jupiter.

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Pluto was listed as 'Not yet explored'. See also. ^ Fimmel, R.

O.; Swindell, W.; Burgess, E. Washington, D.C.: NASA-Ames Research Center. Retrieved 9 January 2011. Retrieved 10 December 2017. Mark, Hans:. Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. Burrows, Exploring Space, (New York: Random House, 1990).

Wade, Mark. Encyclopedia Astronautica. Archived from on 2010-11-20. Retrieved 2011-02-08. 9 November 2010.

Retrieved 12 January 2012. NASA / National Space Science Data Center. Retrieved 2011-02-19. NASA / National Space Science Data Center. Retrieved 2011-02-19. NASA / National Space Science Data Center. Retrieved 2011-02-19.

NASA / National Space Science Data Center. Retrieved 2011-02-19. NASA / National Space Science Data Center. Retrieved 2011-02-19. NASA / National Space Science Data Center. Retrieved 2011-02-19. NASA / National Space Science Data Center. Sun Microsystems.

Retrieved 2011-02-19. NASA / National Space Science Data Center.

Retrieved 2011-02-19. NASA / National Space Science Data Center.

Retrieved 2011-02-19. NASA / National Space Science Data Center. Retrieved 2011-02-19.

NASA / National Space Science Data Center. Retrieved 2011-02-19. NASA / National Space Science Data Center. Retrieved 2013-09-24. Retrieved 23 January 2011.

Muller, Daniel. Daniel Muller.

Retrieved 9 January 2011. New Scientist.

Retrieved 5 December 2017. 25 February 1990. Retrieved 3 December 2017. ^ 'Farewell to a Pioneer'. Science News. 14 October 1995. access-date= requires url=.

NASA / Ames Research Center. September 29, 1995. Retrieved August 7, 2011. Howell, Elizabeth. Retrieved 10 December 2017. Britt, Robert Roy (October 18, 2004). Retrieved 2011-06-07.

The discrepancy caused by the anomaly amounts to about 248,500 miles (399,900 kilometres), or roughly the distance between Earth and the Moon. That's how much farther the probes should have traveled in their 34 years, if our understanding of gravity is correct. The Planetary Society. Retrieved 2012-04-20. Turyshev et al., accepted 11 April 2012, accessed 19 July 2012. Carl Sagan; Linda Salzman Sagan & Frank Drake (1972-02-25).

175 (4024): 881–884. Paper on the background of the plaque. Pages available online:,.

Kronish, Syd (27 October 1991). Retrieved 5 December 2017. External links Wikimedia Commons has media related to. by.

This is an entire book about the Pioneer 10 with all pictures and diagrams, on-line. Scroll down to click on the 'Table of Contents' link. , about the Pioneer project but especially about the Pioneer 11 mission.