Feb 25 2003
From The Space Library
Having received a very weak signal from the Pioneer 10 spacecraft on 22 January 2003, NASA announced that it would make no further attempts to contact the craft. On 2 March 1972, NASA had launched Pioneer 10, built by TRW Inc., on a three-stage Atlas-Centaur rocket. In just 12 weeks, Pioneer 10 had traveled beyond Mars, had become the first spacecraft to pass through the asteroid belt, and had continued to travel beyond Jupiter into deep space, “venturing into places where nothing built by humanity had ever gone before.” Pioneer 10 had last returned telemetry data on 27 April 2002. In the previous three attempts of JPL's Deep Space Network to contact it, Pioneer 10 had emitted very weak response signals, and in the last attempt at contact on 7 February, the Deep Space Network had detected no signal from the spacecraft. Engineers reported that Pioneer 10's radioisotope power source had decayed. Originally, NASA had designed Pioneer 10 for a 21-month mission, but the spacecraft had lasted more than 30 years. (NASA, “Pioneer 10 Spacecraft Sends Last Signal,” news release 03-082, 25 February 2003, http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2003/feb/HP_news_03082.html (accessed 16 July 2008).
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