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Older members will remember the Pioneer 10 & 11 missions - shot out into space in the mid 1970's they returned the first close up pics of Jupiter.
They were tracked and monitored until 2002 with occasional success in downloading telemetry from 10. Increasing distance (P10 is 87AU out now) and the slow decay of the nuclear reactors on board led to the last attempt at contact in 2003 failing.
P10 was tracked for 7.6 billion miles(!) and has now travelled 8 billion miles and it travelling at over 27000 mph......
_http://spaceprojects.arc.nasa.gov/Space_Projects/pioneer/PNhome.html
There will be one last effort on March 6th to contact Pioneer 10 and this really is the last chance - the spacecraft trajectory will soon mean that the antenna is no longer pointing at the Earth.
_http://www.planetary.org/programs/projects/pioneer_anomaly/update_200511.html
Incredible all but one of the earlier Pioneers which were launched in the mid 1960's were nominally partially operational into the mid 1990's
They were tracked and monitored until 2002 with occasional success in downloading telemetry from 10. Increasing distance (P10 is 87AU out now) and the slow decay of the nuclear reactors on board led to the last attempt at contact in 2003 failing.
P10 was tracked for 7.6 billion miles(!) and has now travelled 8 billion miles and it travelling at over 27000 mph......
_http://spaceprojects.arc.nasa.gov/Space_Projects/pioneer/PNhome.html
There will be one last effort on March 6th to contact Pioneer 10 and this really is the last chance - the spacecraft trajectory will soon mean that the antenna is no longer pointing at the Earth.
_http://www.planetary.org/programs/projects/pioneer_anomaly/update_200511.html
Incredible all but one of the earlier Pioneers which were launched in the mid 1960's were nominally partially operational into the mid 1990's
Pioneer 6-9
Pioneers 6-9 were launched into Solar orbit between 1965 and 1968. Their prime mission completed years ago, the spacecraft were then tracked only occasionally.
Pioneer 6 was launched on 16 December 1965. Some time after 15 December 1995 (almost 30 years after it was launched) the primary transmitter (TWT) failed. During a track on 11 July 1996 the spacecraft was commanded to switch to the backup TWT, and the downlink signal was re-acquired. The spacecraft and a few of the science instruments were again functioning.
Pioneer 6 was featured on the Star Date radio broadcast by the University of Texas McDonald Observatory on 16 December 2000 - the 35th anniversary of its launch. Pioneer 6 is the oldest NASA spacecraft extant. There was a successful contact of Pioneer 6 for about two hours on 8 December 2000 to commemorate its anniversary.
Pioneer 7 was launched on 17 August 1966. It was last tracked successfully on 31 March 1995. The spacecraft and one of the science instruments were still functioning.
Pioneer 8 was launched on 13 December 1967. Its primary TWT failed several years ago, but on 22 August 1996 the spacecraft was commanded to switch to the backup TWT, and the downlink signal was re-acquired. The spacecraft and one of the science instruments were again functioning.
Pioneer 9 was launched on 8 November 1968. The spacecraft failed in 1983.