Launch of Pioneer 10 | Humanity goes farther than ever | Techday, March 2nd
On this TECHDAY in history, on March 2nd 1972, NASA launched the Pioneer 10 spacecraft on a mission to explore the outer planets of the solar system. It was the first vessel to make it through the asteroid belt and successfully reached Jupiter in November 1973.
The Pioneer 10 took 60 days to gather this information while the probe was in range of the planet. It is still unknown as to where it’s heading – but in 1976, it passed Saturn, 1979 Uranus and 1983 Poseidon. Appropriate data was sent back from the mission even after it reached these locations. Pioneer 10 probe could not detect any signal since 2003 and had reached 12 billion km.
Fun fact, the 260kg spacecraft was the first of artificial objects to acert the velocity needed to leave the Solar System. Assembled around a hexagonal bus with around 2,7m diameter, had four radiosotopoe thermoelectric generators for its electric power.
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Author: PC-GR
The World of Technology
