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Unmanned Spaceflight.com _ Voyager and Pioneer _ Pioneer 10 at 100AU, 200AU from Voyager 1

Posted by: dmuller Oct 31 2009, 11:32 PM

On glancing on my own website, I found that two statistical milestones are coming up soon:
100AU - distance of http://www.dmuller.net/realtime/realtime.php?mission=pioneer10 from the Sun
200AU - distance between http://www.dmuller.net/realtime/realtime.php?mission=voyager1

Naturally, the Pioneer 10 mission is over and no contact exists with the spacecraft anymore, but still impressive!

Posted by: Decepticon Nov 1 2009, 03:58 PM

Wow!

Posted by: ups Nov 1 2009, 06:18 PM

QUOTE (dmuller @ Nov 1 2009, 12:32 AM)

Naturally, the Pioneer 10 mission is over and no contact exists with the spacecraft anymore, but still impressive!

Is Pioneer completely dead at this point or do some of the instruments still have a bit of power remaining?

Posted by: JohnVV Nov 1 2009, 10:33 PM

Is Pioneer completely dead at this point or do some of the instruments still have a bit of power remaining?

i thought that the nuke on it was still putting out about 0.001 watts

not much but just a radio blip every now and then ??
i don't know for sure .

Posted by: Hungry4info Nov 1 2009, 10:44 PM

Surely not. If either Pioneer gave out a little detected blip, I'm sure it would have been heard about here on UMSF (Remembering the ICE is alive! thread).

Posted by: djellison Nov 1 2009, 11:06 PM

Pioneer 10

QUOTE

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 12 billion kilometers (7.5 billion miles) from Earth.[8]
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 10.[9]

Pioneer 11

QUOTE

The spacecraft has operated on a backup transmitter since launch. Instrument power sharing began in February 1985 due to declining generator power output. Science operations and daily telemetry ceased on September 30, 1995 when the RTG power level was insufficient to operate any experiments. As of the end of 1995, when its mission ended, the spacecraft was located at 44.7 AU from the Sun at a nearly asymptotic latitude of 17.4 degrees above the solar equatorial plane and was heading outward at ~2.4 AU/year (11.6 km/s); this is the lowest velocity of the five spacecraft now escaping the Solar System (Voyagers 1 and 2, Pioneers 10 and 11, and New Horizons). [1]
Earth's motion has carried it out of alignment with the spacecraft antenna. As the antenna cannot be maneuvered to point back at our planet, it is no longer possible with current technology to establish further communication from Earth with the probe.

Wiki.

Posted by: New Ocean Nov 27 2009, 02:59 AM

QUOTE (JohnVV @ Nov 1 2009, 05:33 PM)

i thought that the nuke on it was still putting out about 0.001 watts

How could it possibly have decayed so far? The half life for Pu238 is something like 85 years. It should be putting out more than that. I was under the impression that while science instruments could not operate anymore, the radio could. Tracking was stopped to save money.

Posted by: ugordan Nov 27 2009, 10:07 AM

QUOTE (New Ocean @ Nov 27 2009, 03:59 AM)

How could it possibly have decayed so far?

It's not so much Pu decay as it is thermocouple decay in the RTG due to radiation degrading.

Posted by: K-P Jan 21 2010, 12:46 PM

And so today Pioneer 10 reached 100 AU from the Sun!
So, congratulations to the original team although the probe is already silent...
Would have been interesting to receive some data still from Pioneer 10 since it is the
only interstellar probe heading towards the tail of Sun's heliosphere.

http://www.heavens-above.com/solar-escape.asp

Posted by: climber Jan 21 2010, 03:41 PM

QUOTE (K-P @ Jan 21 2010, 01:46 PM)

As I already told here, Pioneer 10 has been launched the very same day I had my first driving lesson.
I'm very far from having driven 15.000.000.000 kms... but I'm still talking.

Posted by: K-P Jan 21 2010, 04:39 PM

QUOTE (climber @ Jan 21 2010, 05:41 PM)

I'm very far from having driven 15.000.000.000 kms... but I'm still talking.

...and RTG of your Ford Pinto...?

Posted by: climber Jan 21 2010, 08:00 PM

QUOTE (K-P @ Jan 21 2010, 05:39 PM)

...and RTG of your Ford Pinto...?

Ford C-Max actually!