Aug 18 1973
From The Space Library
Pioneer 11, launched April 5 on a 1-billion-km (620-million-mi) journey to Jupiter, entered the Asteroid Belt 300 million km (190 million mi) from the earth. The spacecraft would travel seven months through the 251-million-km (156-million-mi) belt of rocky celestial bodies orbiting the sun and was scheduled to exit March 12, 1974. Its sister spacecraft, Pioneer 10 (launched toward Jupiter March 2, 1972), had safely completed crossing the Asteroid Belt in February and was 544 million km (338 million mi) from the earth. Pioneer 10 would reach Jupiter in December 1973; Pioneer 11 would reach the planet in December 1974. (NASA Release 73-164)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
