Aerospace Technology

The first spacecraft to leave the asteroid belt, Pioneer 10, has a really long history. Launched on March 2, 1972 in Cape Kennedy , it is still traveling towards Aldebaran, Taurus. Aldebaran is the brightest star in the constellation of Taurus. Roughly, it would take the spacecraft about two million years to arrive at the star. Pioneer 10 is the first spacecraft to pass through the Asteroid belt and the first manmade object to break from our solar system and travel on a flight path towards interstellar space. It’s main purpose of creation was to study many different unknown questions occurred only in deep outer space such as interplanetary and outer planetary magnetic fields and the transition region of the heliosphere.

Pioneer 10 was part of the Pioneer program from the NASA Ames Research Center. It was about 260 kg where most consisted of instruments and fuel. It is fueled by radioisotope thermoelectric generators containing plutonium-238. NASA, assuming that Pioneer 10 will eventually lose signal with them, placed a plaque that identified humans and the earth in case of extraterrestrial  life. Eric Burgess believed that a Pioneer spacecraft should carry a plaque featuring humanity in case the spacecraft be intercepted by extraterrestrial life. After Dr. Carl Sagan’s lecture on communication with extraterrestrial intelligence at a conference in Crimea, Eric Burgess collaborated and they both decided to present the idea to NASA. NASA approved the plan and gave  three weeks to prepare the message. During that time, Dr. Sagan and Dr. Frank Drake designed the plaque where afterward, Dr. Sagan’s wife created the artwork. The plaque is made out of 6061 T6 gold-anodized aluminum and weighs about 0.120 kilograms. It has a width of 229 mm and the length of 152 mm, and about 1.27 thick. The plaque contains two nude people which Dr. Sagan and Dr. Frank Drake believed that extraterrestrials should know the true body of humans. It also engraves the solar system and notifies the earth on the plaque. A small spacecraft is visible in the solar system where it leaves a trail from Earth which represents the Pioneer 10. There is a silhouette of the Pioneer 10 behind the man and woman. Again, this plaque was created in order to communicate with extraterrestrial life forms.

Pioneer 10 is currently tracked by the Deep Space Network and very weak signals were produced by the spacecraft on April 27, 2002. People believe that the reason behind the weak signals were not caused by physical damage on the craft but the slowly increasing distance and its very weak power source.  The Deep Space Network continued to be alert for a signal from Pioneer 10 when on January 23, 2006, Pioneer 10 sent its last signal notifying that he was 7.5 billion miles away from the Earth. The Deep Space Network tried to track the spacecraft March 4, 2006 but resulted in failure. However, the DSN is continuously checking their instruments to track their project that was launched about 30 years ago. It is clearly shown that the DSN do not want to give up their very old and successful Pioneer project.

Information from http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/pioneer/index.html, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_10, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_plaque, http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/releases/2003/03_25HQ.html, and http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast03may_1.htm