NASA Gives Up On Pioneer 10

Soft writes "Another Energizer Bunny has finally given out: Pioneer 10's generators have decayed to the point that DSN can no longer detect the probe's signals. It was the first spacecraft to penetrate the asteroid belt (1972) and fly by Jupiter (1973). So long and thanks for all the pic's..."

So long old friend

[Anonymous Coward]

They just don't make 'em like they used to.

Rest in peace

[andyring]

Pioneer 10, and other satellites of that era, worked far beyond what they were intended, and did a darn good job (and then some) at what they did. Pioneer 10, you did good. May you rest in peace. A job well done.

Haiku

[sconeu]

A little spacecraft
Far away among the stars
Rest well, Pioneer

Another Space Era comes to a close

[dWhisper]

This is the second major deep space probe in the last few months that has gone south. Sad, because Pioneer 10 was the one that paved the way for so many other missions (like the Voyager Missions).

Here's to a long and steady life to the remaining deep space missions out there.

Distance.

[cybermace5]

It's 7.6 billion miles away. Almost 12 hours at the speed of light. And it will take two million years to reach a star considered to be in our close neighborood.

Incomprehensible space...it's incredibly daunting, yet unbelievably appealing. Pioneer 10 was sent out in the same spirit as the pioneers of early America: the lure of seemingly boundless space and undiscovered wonders.

This pioneer is blazing a trail we all hope to follow someday. Goodbye Pioneer 10, you have served us well.

Paraphrase from "Apollo 13"

[Mr. Fusion]

She sure was a good ship.
Farewell, Pioneer. And we thank you.

-Mr. Fusion

We should retrieve it someday

[jonman_d]

If/when technology permits, we should make it a point to send a ship to retrieve the probe, for both practical and symbolic reasons. It'd be interesting to see the ware and tare on a craft that's been through so much as it has; and, it has a great historical value. As a sign of respect to itself and its builders, Pioneer deserves to be in a measeum of sorts.

Of course, my other half tells me, for the same reasons, let it alone, in space, quietly, where its home is.

Re:Wow!

[kfg]

When people ask me, "What sign?" I say, "Sputnik."

If you think you feel old now, wait until you start getting old, my son. :)

America's oldest man died on Monday. He was actually born in a log cabin and of high school age when the Wright Bros. first flew at Kitty Hawk.

Think about that one the next time you feel "old." Your world has hardly moved at all compared to his.

KFG

Am I missing something here?

[itallushrt]

Why don't all you people stop thanking a hunk of metal and start thanking the scientist and engineers that designed, built, and launched Pioneer 10. They are the real reasons this post even exist.

Goddamn

[cranos]

You know you are truly geek when something like this almost brings tears to your eyes. I mean this thing had less computing power than your average calculator and yet it managed to be useful for thirty years?
See what happens when you actually give your space programme decent funding? You do something like this, something which comes close to making the human race look like something more than six billion savages scrabbling in the dirt.

Re:So long old friend

[Anonymous Coward]

Note that the triumphs of NASA date from the era when engineers ran the programs, and not political hacks like now. I feel sorry for the young engineers now who will never experience the greatness which was NASA.

There were no slackers then. There were dedicated young engineers with buzz cuts and and a slide rule. They didn't listen to "Hip Hop" or "Heavy Metal". They didn't wear baggy pants. They weren't interested in fashion or political correctness. Their uniform was a crisp white dress shirt, a string tie, and a pair of drip-dry Hagar slacks, accessorized with a leather holster--which held an 18 inch slide rule. Bang.

These men were focused on quality and greatness. They were patriotic, dedicated men who strove each day to make America first with the best engineering the human mind could conceive.

Today NASA is run by "professional" managers and bureaucrats. They cow-tow not to quality but to politically motivated "quotas" and false "diversity". Slackers abound. "Getting over" takes precedence over "getting it right".

The saddest thing of all is not the failures of the current space program, as disturbing as they might be. The saddest thing is that we have lost the spirit and the system and methodology which yielded our greatest triumphs.

it's doubtfull that anyone far away will hear

[autopr0n]

Asside from a few projects designed to beam high-energy signals at spesific stars, most of the radio waves we send out will be so weak that they would never be able to be detected against background nose just a few lightyears away.

Re:Am I missing something here?

[kfg]

I have to admit you have a point. The first thing I did when I saw this headline was go to my bookshelf and take out my copy of The Cosmic Connection, by Dr. Carl Sagan, and start crying.

On the cover of the book is a photo of two humans against a field of stars, mimicing the plaque that Dr. Sagan designed to be affixed to Pioneer 10.

This book was a personal gift from Carl to me. We "lost contact" with Dr. Sagan some years ago.

So, Carl, ya done good, and I miss the bloody hell out of you. Goodnight and God bless.

KFG

Re:Rest in peace

[Anonymous Coward]

For FUCK'S SAKE, Pionner 10 *IS* _NOT_ A *FUCKING SATELLITE*. GET YOUR FUCKING GODDAMN TERMS RIGHT!!!!

Jesus H Fucking Christ limping on a rubber crutch preserve me from morons trying to sound insightful with the wrong words!

Re:Lifespan?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are forgetting the solar wind. Throwing charged particles at a tenth of the speed of light, not great for electronics.

Re:We should retrieve it someday

[UniverseIsADoughnut]

The best way to honor it is to let it keap going. Just cause we haven't heard from it or won't doesn't mean it's job is done. It's out there and traveling even if all systems are dead. Some day something will find it. That's another part of it's mission. You wouldn't pull the statue of liberty down and put it in a mueaseum because it's done a good job. It's still doing it's job. Yeah I would like to see it to, but it's busy working right now.

Re:Wow!

[kfg]

It may well have been possible for you to have had a computer all of your life. Even the internet, nascent as it may have been, may well predate you.

When he was born he had no *electricity* and no one in his family had ever seen an automobile. Geronimo had only been captured three years previously and was not only still alive, but a comparitively young man.

The world he was born in to was one someone born 500 years before would have recongnized. The world you were born into is one that that hypothetical person couldn't possibly even have conceived of.

You are talking differences in quantity. I am talking differences in quality.

There is no essential difference in type or quality of life today than there was 40 years ago when I first entered school. We live the same way now, with mostly the same things, as we did then. Electricity, phones, central heating, planes, automobiles, movies, TV, hydrogen bombs, etc.

The cars have become a bit more refined, the planes a bit faster, the phones cordless, the movies, well, they havn't changed much at all really. These are just the things we already had becoming better.

I'm not saying we don't live in interesting times, or that I'm not glad to be here, but the two cases are *damned* different.

By the way, the commercial sail record from Sandy Point N.J. at the entrance of NY harbor to Lands End England was only 11 days. It stood for 100 years.

And I'm *damned* glad the internet hasn't come up with one single reason for me not to go to London. That would suck.

KFG

Re:Wow!

[kfg]

You are not yet grey and know how much your world appears to have changed.

I am already, shall we say, "distinquished", and know how much that is illusion, even though I remember when they said a 24 hr/day cable news network would never fly. Now I'm old enough not to watch the news much at all because it doesn't effect your life much. Buy a 20 year old NYT. Same shit, different decade. Read it once every year and you'll stay pretty current. You are mistaking a certain "coolness" factor for real change.

There is no question these are magnificent times, I wouldn't miss them for anything, but the delta of magnificence between 1970 and now is minor compared to the magnificent changes that occured between 1890 and 1960.

Try this test, take everything out of your house that wouldn't have been there in 1970. Should take you several minutes.

Now go to a log cabin in Michigan and start shitting in the woods, cutting wood to stay warm and hauling water from the crick as you would have in 1897.

We stand on the shoulders of giants making crowing sounds every time we grow an inch.

KFG

Retrieving it would be counter-productive

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the Pioneer 10's missions (that will continue indefinitely) is to introduce ourselves to other life forms. The famous plaque onboard describes where things about the Earth, our galaxy, human beings, etc. We don't need to maintain radio contact for that 1-way communication to continue.

Assuming we haven't yet been contacted by another form of life, why would you terminate that wonderful mission prematurely?

The Pioneer 10 was designed to still have a valid function once radio contact was lost. Out of respect for its builders (and Carl Sagan, at the very least), its mission should continue.

Re:it's doubtfull that anyone far away will hear

[RodgerDodger]

As a coherent signal, yes. As static, no way.

The Earth emits almost as much RF radiation as a star. Anyone ET who has been watching our system for the last century would have noticed the massive climb. Anyone ET who is just starting to look at us would notice the anomaly. This would be visible anywhere in the appropriate radius, (about 70 light years), AND that radius is limited by lightspeed, not signal strength.

Re:I'll bite.

[Anonymous Coward]

How long have women and blacks had a chance in any of these fields?

Just as long as white and asian people. In fact, longer - asians and whites are mutations from blacks.

And who gave asians and whites "a chance" in those fields? Hmmmm?

Idiot!

Re:Distance.

[snake_dad]

The thing we sent to that astoroid and landed on had an ion engine. It traveled way faster then anything else we ever put out there.

I think you mean Deep Space 1 [nasa.gov], which has an ion engine and flew within 1,400 miles of comet Borelly. A little extra duty for that spacecraft, not unlike Pioneer greatly exceeding expectations. The one that landed on an asteroid was NEAR Shoemaker [jhuapl.edu], but it has normal thrusters. Both where extraordinary missions.

Re:So long old friend

[varjag]

Note that the triumphs of NASA date from the era when engineers ran the programs, and not political hacks like now.

NASA was always run by politicians (remember what the space race was about?). It is mostly the difference in funding that makes current spaces program look miserable when compared to the glory past.

Re:We should retrieve it someday

[alef.01]

I agree. On the other hand, an effort should have been made to retrieve Mir from orbit instead of leaving it fall down liker that. Regarding the statue of liberty, I can't believe we Egyptians had let it go to America [discoverparis.net]instead of it's intended place at the enterance of Suez Canal!! :)

Re:Wow!

[coastwalker]

Yes I echo your sentiment, I would like to see some more progress

I still think wow! and enjoy all the wonderfull toys we have to play with these days - but its been a mixed experience since I first started taking notice of the world around me in the mid 70's.

Sadly since walking on the moon things have fizzled out a bit in the space exploration area. It did cost a lot of money and mars would be even more expensive. It seems to me that things have stood still somewhat since the 60's. I dont see much evidence that anything has changed since then, except for incremental improvements in ideas that had already been thought of.

Please somebody give me an example of a major breakthrough in ideas, politics, religion or lifestyle that has happened since the 60's

Even the Internet and the personal computer is only being used as a metaphore for something we already had - library, sheet of paper, telephone, junk mail etc etc. Admittedly it is the greatest library, sheet of paper, telephone ever, I have more access to knowledge information and tools to do things than the most priviledged people in history. But I am not smarter than Julius Caeser, Napoleon whatever and certainly will not achieve a fraction of what they did in their lifetimes - even though I know more than them.

Pioneer is an aspirational monument to the 20C, our first steps into space

What is the monument to the 21C going to be? Radically longer lifespan? Environmental meltdown? Bio weapon plagues? The US / China cold war? Clean drinking water for the whole population of Earth? Artificial life software? Money becomes the only motivation? Its all up for grabs, which one is your bet on?

Re:Wow!

[Gonarat]

We need a new space race. In the 1950s and 1960s the U.S. was in competition with the Soviet Union for the exploration of space. The race began with Sputnik and ended with the Moon landing in 1969. Since then, the Soviets/Russians have concentrated on the space station (Salyuts and Mir) and the U.S. has concentrated on the Space Shuttles. This has lead to the current International Space Station.

What we need is a new space race to get us (Humankind) off of our duffs. If China gets their space program off the ground the way they want to, we may see one. Then things will really start to move again. Man back on the Moon, missions to Mars, and more (and better) automated spacecraft exploring the solar system. Pioneer 10 was a well built, wonderful space craft. I'd love to see new ones of that calibur made with today's technology. We just need the incentive.