Pioneer 10

Current Events

On Friday February 28, 2002, scientists at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)'s Deep Space Network in Goldstone, California, sent a signal to the spacecraft to see if it was still functioning. Pioneer 10 was eleven light-hours away at this point, and so it was twenty-two hours later when researchers at the network's facility in Madrid, Spain, heard Pioneer's response.

A later attempt in December 2002 received a faint response, which was too weak to decode. Pioneer 10's final signal (after two previous failures) was received on January 22, 2003. As of February 25, 2003, NASA came to the conclusion that the craft's radioisotope power source was no longer functioning well enough for further contact with Earth. NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) did not detect a signal during the last contact attempt February 7, 2003. The previous three contacts, including the January 22 signal, were very faint with no telemetry received. The last time a Pioneer 10 contact returned telemetry data was April 27, 2002. NASA has no additional contact attempts planned for Pioneer 10.

As of February 5, 2002, Pioneer 10 was 79.66 AU from the Sun. The most recent cosmic ray data from the spacecraft, received on May 19, 2001, show that the vehicle has not yet reached the heliopause.

[1] (http://amesnews.arc.nasa.gov/releases/2003/03-25HQ.html)

See also Pioneer 11, Pioneer program, Pioneer plaque