adieu pioneer 10
NASA loses contact with planetary probe.
NASA today reports that they have lost radio contact with Pioneer 10. While NASA's deep space missions lack the allure of the better known manned excursions, they are nevertheless remarkable when one considers the huge distances the Pioneer and Voyager vessels have travelled. Launched in 1972, Pioneer 10 was the first craft to navigate the Asteroid Belt, and the first to perform close examinations of Jupiter. For much of its operational lifespan it was also the most remote articifial object, until that honor was claimed by the faster Voyager 1 in 1998. At that time, both ships were approximately 6.5 billion miles from Earth.
Sailing silently, barring a collision with an interstellar object, Pioneer 10 will reach the star Aldebaran in about 2 million years.
Also reported today, initial funding has been secured for "New Horizons", a mission to study Pluto and the Kuiper Belt on the Solar System's outer boundary. The planned mission will launch in 2006, reaching Jupiter in about a year and Pluto by 2015. Once there, the vessel will perform the first fly-by of Pluto, then orient itself toward one of the objects in the Kuiper Belt - a band of icy space bodies discovered in 1992. One of these objects, named Quaoar, is 800 miles in diameter (i.e., 1/10 the size of Earth.)
An even more ambitious project under consideration is an interstellar probe employing a solar sail rather than chemical propulsion. A thin, carbon-fiber sail - possibly assisted by lasers or microwave energy - captures the momentum of photons from the Sun. This phenomena, first noticed in the 17th century by Johannes Kepler while observing comets, can propel a spacecraft much faster than chemical rockets. It is estimated that a solar sail probe would cover in eight years the same distance Voyager 1 will travel in forty.
27.02.2003 © ljr