[X] My Assistant

[Robert_47]

The Planetary Society mentions on http://www.planetary.org/programs/projects...ate_200511.html that there would be a contact attempt with Pioneer 10 on March 4, 2006. Any information so far?

[tasp]

Beep barp bwarp . . . .

Pull-ee-az deposit a 25 cents for the next a three a minutes, thang you.

bwoop, bleep, bwop



hummmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

[BPCooper]

Is the situation such that Pioneer's (both of them) power supply has dropped too low to send out a signal, or is it such that that Pioneer is too far away and the signal too weak for our largest antennas to pick it up anymore.

It was my understanding that it is the latter, and that if we had a larger DSN dish we would still be able to pick it up (this is ignoring alignments). Am I misunderstanding? Thanks!

[elakdawalla]

Is the situation such that Pioneer's (both of them) power supply has dropped too low to send out a signal, or is it such that that Pioneer is too far away and the signal too weak for our largest antennas to pick it up anymore.

It was my understanding that it is the latter, and that if we had a larger DSN dish we would still be able to pick it up (this is ignoring alignments). Am I misunderstanding? Thanks!

I sent your question to Slava, and here's the response I got:

We think that the signal actually never left the spacecraft... See, our
figures for required power to operate the transmitter are

Cable loss: 1.6 W
Inverter loss: 5.3 W
CTRF loss: 8.5 W
CTRF load: 12.4 W
TRF loss: 3.4 W
TRF load: 3.6 W
Shunt: 1.6 W
TWT: 22.3 W
-------
total 58.7 W

Thus, we needed total of 58.7 W power to operate the phase-lock loop at
the spacecraft. At the same time, the actual RTG power is about 56.7 W,
leaving us with a 2 W discrepancy, which is consistent with observed
discrepancies in past readings.

Our logic to still conduct this experiment was: i) this was the last
ever attempt, and ii) all the numbers above are with some errors, so the
hope was that we would have just enough power to initiate the contact.
Unfortunately, the cold of the deep space frozen the craft prohibited us
to "motivate" the craft for one last "phone call home.." .

--Emily

[BPCooper]

I sent your question to Slava, and here's the response I got:
--Emily

Thanks Emily.