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Space

Pioneer 10 Finally Dead After 28 Years? 235

Posted by michael from the it-seemed-like-only-yesterday dept.
BorgiaPope writes: "Jill Tarter of the SETI Institute's Project Phoenix writes a sad, elegiac piece in Slate about the apparent final silence of Pioneer 10, launched in 1972 and now more than 7 billion miles from Earth. For the past five years, SETI scientists at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico have used the incredibly faint signals from Pioneer 10 to test the functionality of their noise filtering gear. Alas, Tarter reports that Pioneer 10 hasn't been heard from for several days now. The incredibly hardy, long-lived satellite, which long ago surpassed NASA's wildest expectations for its power supplies and other systems, may finally have drifted peacefully into eternal slumber . . . ." I think the Klingons got it.
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Pioneer 10 Finally Dead After 28 Years? More

Pioneer 10 Finally Dead After 28 Years?

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  • Back in the seventies Nasa made beautiful, functional and sturdy spacecraft which would work for many years without fail.

    These days we get probes that are so blind that they crash into planets.
  • Any product which fails after 49 days is rubbish. How can an Operating System be User-friendly which dies after 49 days? It is pretty ridiculous state of affairs. Yeah! There are problems with all software, the point is they are fixed BEFORE they are released. Surely Win '98 testing period lasted more than 49 days!

    Would you buy a car which was doomed to crash after 49 days, so long as the manufacture provided a patch for it?

    Something that crashes after 49 days is embarassing, no matter who did it. Sure, bring up the point about RedHat. Its embarassing for Redhat too. It makes NO difference except perclating your vain pride in a crappy software.
  • So have humans, accept it and move on :-)

  • 28 *years*? (Score:5)

    by K8Fan ( 37875 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2000 @02:03AM (#700405) Journal

    ...and you think you've got uptime!

    Seriously, it's a testament to the engineering skill of the people who built, launched and operated this particular piece of machinery. Amazing work!

  • ...unless it chanced upon a stray wormhole...
  • ...yep, there's humanity's legacy...free porn!
  • Q: What does the starship Enterprise and toilet paper have in common?
    A: They both circle uranus, fighting to wipe out klingons!


    ------------
    CitizenC
  • In this day and age of super computers, composite materials, and nano-technology, we can't even get our Shuttles to take off on their first scheduled date greater than 1/2 the time, and when they do, they inevitably have something go wrong (as this shuttle mission has).

    To think that the guys that put Pioneer 10 into space were probably still using slide-rulers and those $500 pocket calculators that could only add, subtract, multiply and divide, and they built a space probe that crossed over 7 BILLION miles and ran for 28 YEARS is pretty amazing. Even if it never DID anything.

    When was the last time you bought a vehicle that went 7,000,000,000 miles without a tune up? Or for that matter, what was the last piece of technology you bought that is still operating EVERY SINGLE DAY even after 28 years?

    I have a Mitsubishi 52" TV built in 1982 and every day when I turn it on, I'm amazed to see it still function properly. It didn't cost quite as much as Pioneer 10, but it sure seemed like it did!
  • They don't make 'em like they used to.

  • shame (Score:1)

    by H*rus ( 237994 )
    It's a bloody shame, but to all good things comes an end.

    Mark [zwienenberg.com]



    Mark [zwienenberg.com]
  • It is something like 10,000 years or more until it gets close enough to another star for that to be an issue.
  • If I had moderator points, I'd kick this one up...

    heh
  • humans are hardware. I tore up a tissue the other day and thought it was a lovely end for it. It looked very happy sitting in the trash can.

    -Erik
  • And apart from having a 4004 microprocessor it also featured the following instruments:
    Pioneer 10 Instruments

    Helium Vector Magnetometer (F)

    Plasma Analyzer (P/L)

    Charged Particle Instrument

    Cosmic Ray Telescope

    Geiger Tube Telescope

    Trapped Radiation Detector (P/L)

    Meteoroid Detector (ENC)(F)

    Asteroid-Meteoroid Experiment (ENC)(F)

    Ultraviolet Photometer

    Imaging Photopolarimeter (ENC) (P/L)

    Infrared Radiometer (F)
    (this info comes from here [ttu.edu], which also has info on it's brother pioneer 11, which died in Dec '95)

  • Can't we send an other probe, inside one of those magnetic bubles [slashdot.org], to find it.

    Mark [zwienenberg.com]


    Mark [zwienenberg.com]
  • Though that plaque may last a long time, I just hope that it gets interpreted correctly.

    Eh, it will probably be covered up by some other planet's government in a Roswell-like incident.

  • I think you mean 10 to 20 billion miles from the sun.

  • You mean our heads aren't?

    Damn, I've been doing something wrong then ...

  • Naawww.... since it is running Win98, they must've upgraded several times. the only problem is that they tried to upgrade to WinME, but alas, it's only a 16-bit processor...

    (anyway, the parent was funny to any *nix fans, i think you got hit by the non linux zealot moderators)
    ---
    dd if=/dev/random of=~/.ssh/authorized_keys bs=1 count=1024

  • Was pioneer 10 the thing the klingons destryed in Star Trek 5? Why was a bird of prey so close to Earth? (STV ~ 2290, about 320 years at 7billion miles/28 years, or 250,000,000 mile a year, 80 billion miles, or about 0.01 light years.

    It fell into a quantum plot hole, and re-appeared in the delta quadrant.


    --

  • Yep there's humanity's legacy permanantly engraved, outlasting us by countless millenia...free nude pics!
  • Any product which fails after 49 days is rubbish. How can an Operating System be User-friendly which dies after 49 days?

    Because 99.99999% of it's users shut it down each night when they go to bed? Nobody CARES if the OS stays up for more than 49 days or not. We run Linux on most servers at work, NT on the workstations and I run Win98SE at home. Crashing is not a problem on ANY of these OS's. I can't understand how people have the energy to talk about it over and over and over and OVER again. I'm *MUCH* more interested in what kind of applications are avaiable and what I can do with those (or our clients). User friendliness has NOTHING to do with if the OS stays up for 49 days or not - for a server sure, but not for a client OS.

    And it has absolutely nothing at all to do with a space probe.

    Would you buy a car which was doomed to crash after 49 days, so long as the manufacture provided a patch for it?

    If the car ran for 49 CONSECUTIVE DAYS without turning off the engine, I wouldn't care if it would crash after that. I - myself - only run for about 48 hours straight and after that I can shut off my computer. In any case, you're comparing apples to oranges.

  • Great idea! Charlie Brown, or probably Linus in particular would be a great mascot for Linux. The Penguin is a good mascot, but Linus more PRECISELY captures the child like innocence, and trust, that GNU/Linux has brought back to computing.

  • Pioner Plaque ingraving outliving humanity? (Score:5)

    by Defraggle ( 70799 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2000 @02:06AM (#700425)
    From the NASA Website:

    "
    We expect Pioneer to last an indeterminate period of time, probably outlasting its home planet, the Earth. In 5 billion years, the Sun will become a red giant, expand, envelop the orbit of the Earth, and consume it. Pioneer will still be out there in interstellar space. Erosional processes in the interstellar environment are largely unknown, but are very likely less efficient than erosion within the solar system, where a characteristic erosion rate, due largely to micrometeoritic pitting, is of the order of 1 Angstrom/yr. Thus a plate etched to a depth ~ 0.01 cm should survive recognizable at least to as distance ~ 10 parsecs, and most probably to 100 parsecs. Accordingly, Pioneer 10 and any etched metal message aboard it are likely to survive for much longer periods than any of the works of Man on Earth.
    "

    A picture of the plaque:

    http://spaceprojects.arc.nasa.gov/Space_Projects /pioneer/PNimgs/Plaque.gif

    That made me think, I hope you share the experience.

    Defraggle
    Head monkey
    Dynamic League of discord POEE Cabal "Monkey"
  • . Surely we don't want the first men on Mars to plant the red flag of communism on such a brave new world?

    Actually I wouldn't prefer an American flag of Capitalism planted there either. =) A UN flag or something would be nice though.
  • I hope that this is just a glitch or some temporary condition.

    Perhaps we should try sending someone to reboot it?
  • Isn't Earth's escape velocity about 25,000 mph?


    Probably. But that doesn't mean it had to reach 25000mph to leave Earth. If something has no method of self-propulsion along the way, then it must reach "escape velocity" to leave earth. But with propulsion, you can leave earth without exceeding 10mph.


    A bullet might need to be fired at escape velocity to leave, but something being pushed all the way up doesn't.

  • You know if the theories hold out we may not have to worry about chasing down pioneer. Space is curved.

  • Normally, NASA immediately hands-over hardware to the Smithsonian at the end of it's life. This certainly applied throughout Apollo where (I believe) the material at the lunar landing sites for A11, 12, 14, 15, 16 & 17 are already the property of the Smithsonian... They just have to go pick 'em up :-)

    Note that since the Smithsonian is a federal entity as is NASA, ownership of hardware remains with the Government at all times.

    I'd imagine that deep-space probes would follow this precedent; I certainly can't see the US Government allowing private individuals/companies or foreign nation states to just wade on in and pick 'em up and sell to the highest bidder...

    On the other hand, any state/company/individual with the ability to do so would possibly not give a fig what the US Government says anyway...

    Oh, and about the astronomical distances... In space, distance is easy, it's a function of how long you can be bothered to wait. It's astronomical *velocities* we ought to be celebrating...

  • Your reaction to something which has a less than stellar performance is the re-define the criteria in which to consider it a success. Where as those who believe in Linux insist on higher stands, when faced with failure, your attitide is to LOWER your standards till you reach a level, and assert disinterest, by which you can define ANYTHING as a success.

    If you really do not care about the issue so much then why do you bother to argue or paticipate in an argument? It is acceptable to be ignorant about an issue but to declaim your disinterest and ignorance about the issue so loudly is another matter.

    User friendliness DOES have something to do with the workmanship of a product. If a product takes that much more effort to stay up, ESPECIALLY beyond the extent to which it is required, then it will DEFINITELY take the effort to excel in areas that is required. Failure in this area affects the availability of applications, once they are running.

    Is the FAILURE of an OS, beyond a certain time duration:

    (a) a request of Users?
    (b) a FALSE generalisation by yourself to paclate your ZEALOUSNESS for mediocre software?
    (c) an escape clause for people who develop mediocre software?

    Ask yourself whose interest does it serve? Who profits from this upper limit?

    If someone was about to set out on a journey, which was only going to be 10000 miles. He had no plans to travel any further than that. What do you think he would buy? A car which travels 10000 miles then stops permanently, or one which travels 20000 miles (and cast less than the former one)?

    "Nobody CARES if the OS stays up for more than 49 days or not."

    Do not shout your ignorance so loudly.
  • Reading such an article I feel close like we've lost a man. This one is older than me. Dead now.
    ---
    Every secretary using MSWord wastes enough resources
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Re:It Died when? (Score:3)

    by ocelotbob ( 173602 ) <ocelot@@@ocelotbob...org> on Tuesday October 17, 2000 @10:48AM (#700434) Homepage
    It would have died 21 hours previous. Makes you think, the closest star is ~4 Light Years away, and it's taken us 28 years to get .002 Light Years.

    God, I feel microscopic

  • ROTFL!

    That would have been funny if I didn't think you were so serious!
  • I'd really like to know what other machines have long lifetimes. Apparently ships have a long lifetime (I suppose several decades, how long exactly ?). Some steam engines (trains) also still work. Then there are probably a number of clocks that run for a long time as well.

    Does anyone know of specific examples for these ?
    Any other machine types ?

  • Ah, the uptimes you could get on an Intel chip before the days of Windows...

  • Re:Maybe signals can be picked up again next year? (Score:3)

    by ansible ( 9585 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2000 @06:13AM (#700446) Journal

    Chances are not very good.

    The problem is that the transmissions from Pioneer 10 are already just a smidge above the noise threshold for the receiving equipment. Even if things had gone exactly as planned, we'd have still lost contact with it next year.

    It's amazing to think about the probe. It's the furthest any of our technology has travelled away from us.

    It's still out there now, in the cold, cold, cold of space. It is truly swimming in a sea of stars. The Sun is barely brighter than the other stars in the sharp blackness. It still listening for the whispers of its masters, still waiting at their command. However, it can no longer hear from the people who have cared about it so much. It is all alone now. So far, far away from home.

    As the years go on, it's heart, the RTG, will slowly cool, and the bus voltage will drop. At some point, the heartbeat of it's system clock will stop, and the little probe will sleep for eternity. Asleep among the stars.

  • I mean , fetishizing hardware is one thing , but guys .. its a machine, shot into space and left adrift and monitored remotely. It doesn't do peace and slumber and human shit ..
    It had a finite lifespan , accept it and move on :-)

  • I doubt we'll ever have to worry about this - now that it's no longer emitting radiation it'll be virtually impossible to find, and over the next decades and centuries the patch of space we'd have to search to find them will grow bigger and bigger. Additionally, while predicting timelines for this kind of thing is a joke, I think a "warp drive" or even something that could accelerate, stop, and turn around to go back to earth at fast enough for the crew to not be dead is still at least a century away.

    Combining those two factors, by the time we have the capability to retrieve an object from deep space, the amount of deep space we'll have to search to find them will be just too big, unless we get really exotic and have technologies like endless quantities of nanospaceships with surveillance gear, perhaps.

    Could somebody with more background in this stuff please comment?

  • Does uptime apply to a device containing no CPU?

    As I recall, the Pioneer series doesn't contain a "true" programmable computer; it's more like a fancy sequence controller (built around LSI logic, natch). The Voyager series were the first (deep space) probes containing a programmable computer; they do have continuous uptime of 25-odd years).

  • At least one "FBC" project exceeded it's design lifetime by (as I recall) a factor of 4.

    Mars Pathfinder's wee little cutie Sojourner rover had a design lifetime of 1 week (or was it 14 days, I can't recall). It ran for the best part of 2 months, and indeed it's believed Soujourner outlived the Pathfinder (renamed Sagan Station) home base which suffered a transmitter failure... Apparently, the fallback method of regaining contact was for Soujourner to "orbit" Pathfinder at a fixed distance (10 metres?) constantly re-trying to connect; it's been speculated that when we finally get to Mars we might find a deep circular track worn in the dust by Sojourner's continuous circuits...

    A nice idea, but highly improbable.

  • Its not dead yet (Jim) (Score:3)

    by Lawrence_Bird ( 67278 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2000 @06:19AM (#700458) Homepage
    and even if it were, we probably wouldn't be able
    to tell. Theres a difference between *dead* and
    a signal so faint that any misalignment makes it
    impossible to receive.

    Pioneer 10

    (Launched 2 March 1972)

    Distance from Sun (1 October 2000): 76.18 AU Speed relative to the Sun: 12.24 km/sec (27,380 mph) Distance from Earth: 11.34 billion
    kilometers (7.047 billion miles) Round-trip Light Time: 21 hours 00 minutes

    The latest Pioneer activity was on September 10, when DSS 63 tracked the spacecraft. The station was not able to acquire the downlink.
    However, there was a report of two momentary receiver glitches at the Pioneer 10 frequency. This report was encouraging, since it means that
    the spacecraft signal is there, but it is still off Earth point. The Earth look angle (ELA) is estimated to be over 1.4 degrees. The downlink signal
    strength drops off rapidly after 1.0 degree. The Earth is just starting to go back towards the PN 10 spin axis. As the year continues, the Earth
    will be closer in alignment with the spacecraft pointing and the tracking stations should be able to regain lock. We anticipate this to be about
    the middle of December. Our latest calculation of the ephemeris yields: Right Ascension = 76.27 degrees, Declination = 25.91 degrees.

    Since Pioneer 10 is over 75 AU distant and its telemetry signal is virtually at the limit of overall communication system's link margin, the
    spacecraft was chosen as a convenient test vehicle for the new methodology of Chaos theory. Chaotic.com has been testing the applicability of
    new methods in semi-blind signal estimation and noise reduction using Pioneer 10 signals. From the latest progress report by Richard. R.
    Holland of chaotic.com, there are two main areas of development: algorithm development and data analysis. Currently NASA and JPL are
    working with chaos.com to resolve issues regarding the data analysis. Keep tuned to this web-site for future progress reports on chaos theory
    and Pioneer 10.
  • 8 miles a second. Here's a stupid thought. It's moving at 8 miles a second. How do you catch it on the other end, to look at it? If it hits anything, it's destroyed, no doubt about it, so that information plate that's on it(if that wasn't a voyager only thing) is destroyed. So you have to have technology capable of hunting this thing down by accelerating to its speed, and then grabbing it, and slowing it down. If one of these wandered through our solar system, we'd have a hell of a time catching it, even with todays technology, no?
  • Btw, not everyone believes in some "Lord" who created the universe. I certainly dont.

    Right on. I'm firmly belive that the universe its just the inside of a giant marble, being played with by aliens. Well, it's just as sensible a theory as all the crackpot religious ones, ain't it? ;-)

  • Re:28 *years*? (Score:3)

    by garethwi ( 118563 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2000 @02:25AM (#700475) Homepage
    Apparently it's powered by Energizer Bunnies.
  • It's not like it's just "somewhere out there", both the trajectory and velocity are well known. The only things that can change to course of this thing are a close encounter with an asteroid (an extremely unlikely event) and gravitational fields of stars (whose effect is easily calculated). All you need is some spreadsheet-magic and a ship that can do Warp 2.

    --


  • Even if we could recover it, I don't think anyone should.

    For the reason why, read this. [slashdot.org]

    Thad

  • So the plaque would end up being a sort of dead link?

    URL NOT FOUND:

    Sorry, the terrestrial body you requested could not be located in this solar system! The local star could be down, or the idiot inhabitants have destroyed themselves.

    Please contact the Solar System Administrator if the problem persists.

  • DS1 is solar powered... not really much hope for it much beyond jupiter or so (and even thats really pushing it)... Deep space missions basically require nuclear energy sources, no other alternatives exist.

  • Pioneer Launched On My Birthday (Score:4)

    by namespan ( 225296 ) <namespan.elitemail@org> on Tuesday October 17, 2000 @06:45AM (#700487) Journal
    One of the Pioneers (and I beleive it was 10)
    was launched on my birthday in 1972 (Mar 2). I've always sortof identified with it. Though I suppose we're obviously not life-force linked in some odd sci-fi way, because I'm still typ
  • It wasn't Pioneer 10, it was one of the Voyager probes (ST TPM listed some number > 2 as the total number of Voyager problems that NASA was supposed to have launched, but I believe we in reality only launched 2).
  • Our airplane fleet is indeed quite old (dangerously old according to many), but remember that these airplanes are constantly inspected and repaired... Pioneer 10 hasn't been seen by anyone since it was launched.

    It's longevity is due to it's simplistic design and it's RTG power sources. The most likely reason for it's (suspected) failure is the final exausting of those RTGs. The voltage has just finally dropped below the absolute minimum necessary to power the transmitter. It's been running very close to the limit for the last several years...
  • First of all, why does Microsoft have to be mentioned in *EVERY SINGLE* story no matter how little the story has to do with Microsoft? Second, the site you linked to has a PATCH for the problem. There are problems with all software - the point is if they are fixed or not. This one has been fixed years ago so what's your problem? You don't think there has been problems in other OS's and software? You're just making you and the open source community look dumb with comments like that!
  • Odd that such noble sentiment should be given to the loss of Pioneer 10... when, according to 'http://spac epr ojects.arc.nasa.gov/Space_Projects/pioneer/PNhome. html [nasa.gov]', Pioneers 6, 7, and 8 were still working okay last time anyone bothered to check in on them!



    The NASA web site on the Pioneer projects is fascinating. 'http://spac epr ojects.arc.nasa.gov/Space_Projects/pioneer/PNStat. html [nasa.gov]' explains how Pioneer is now sailing through a better vacuum than any which can be created on Earth, and how the spacecraft is expected to outlive Earth itself, when our sun will become a red giant in five billion years: "Pioneer 10 and any etched metal message aboard it are likely to survive for much longer periods than any of the works of Man on Earth." I hope that, five billion years from now, Earth is only one of thousands of planets colonized by humans...



    Also interesting is an image of the plaque on-board Pioneer, 'http: //s paceprojects.arc.nasa.gov/Space_Projects/pioneer/P Nimgs/Plaque.gif [nasa.gov]'. I never realized how downright cryptic it looks... I wonder if an alien race would really be able to figure out what it represents?

  • For a while, I was an officer in an attempt to revive SEDS (the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space) at the University of Texas at Austin. Our faculty sponsor was Aerospace Engineering professor Dr. Hans Mark, who was also the deputy head of NASA at the time Pioneer 10 was shipped off.

    At the time, the engineers wanted to use the latest and greatest technology in Pioneer 10 -- a tape recorder -- to increase its data rate by an order of magnitude. He shot down the idea, because he wanted no moving parts in Pioneer 10.

    The much-vaunted tape recorder device the young engineers wanted to use later failed after very brief forays in the next few projects, but Pioneer 10 has been around for all this time. All of science benefits from that decision.

    The moral of the story to young engineers is clear: The latest isn't always the greatest. Sometimes you should sacrifice "bigger, better, faster" for reliability.

    It's neat that Pioneer 10 lasted so long. I'm sorry to see it go. Of course, now that the Psychlos have it, they'll be after us for all of our gold, and it'll be another thousand years before we reclaim our planet and destroy Psychlo, but it'll all be worth it in the end. ;)
  • It's the furthest any of our technology has travelled away from us

    Not quite...I've read that last year sometime, Voyager 1 passed Pioneer 10 as the most distant craft...

  • Pioneer 10 used an intel 4004 microprocessor (Score:4)

    by ch-chuck ( 9622 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2000 @02:38AM (#700503) Homepage
    From what I could find [irobot.org].
  • After reading the article on the front page, I'd like to know at what point the poster as well as /. was able to leap to the conclusion that the P10 was dead. Even the article (diary) didn't come to such a conclusion. As an avid follower of space news (though many believe it a waste of money, even /. at times) I was disappointed to be mislead by the news 'tip' and the irrational jump to a conclusion derived from the fact that the SETI team at first got a signal then determined that it was from their equipment to mean that P10 was dead in the water. This is a helluva jump.

    There are a number of reasons why SETI equipment, even the Aracibo hardware did not pick it up, most of which have been touched on in previous comments. The problem as I see it is a premature conclusion from one reader and slashdot newsposters not reading the article submitted before posting, thereby leading to a loss in life (mine) rebutting said article.

    Lastly, in the e-tip posted on the front page, there were MANY inaccuracies concerning the article, most of which were derived, of course by the tipsters imagination, on a single paragraph. If I'm correct, the posters paraphrase on said paragraph was twice the size of the original. My only real gripe here is not the fact that this is important, its not, the P10 will not really give us much data that we can use for the next few lifetimes if operational, but that a great site like /. doesn't seems to research submitted news tips the way they should for the number of devout daily readers.

    Please feel free to slam a 1 one me :)
  • And Voyager 2 has passed Voyager 1.
  • According to the NASA Voyager Page [nasa.gov], Voyager 1 is further out than Voyager 2 (scroll down to the stats)
  • Please reread Matusushita's comment above. This whole thing is premature. From the project status page at http://spaceprojects.arc.nasa.gov/Space_Projects/p ioneer/PNStat.html :

    The latest Pioneer activity was on September 10, when DSS 63 tracked the spacecraft. The station was not able to acquire the downlink. However, there was a report of two momentary receiver glitches at the Pioneer 10 frequency. This report was encouraging, since it means that the spacecraft signal is there, but it is still off Earth point. The Earth look angle (ELA) is estimated to be over 1.4 degrees. The downlink signal strength drops off rapidly after 1.0 degree. The Earth is just starting to go back towards the PN 10 spin axis. As the year continues, the Earth will be closer in alignment with the spacecraft pointing and the tracking stations should be able to regain lock. We anticipate this to be about the middle of December. Our latest calculation of the ephemeris yields: Right Ascension = 76.27 degrees, Declination = 25.91 degrees.
  • These figures are pretty impressive. [...] 8 miles per second.

    8 miles a second.

    That's not unusual. Just remember, the thing that Voyager 10 flew very close to a planet or two that weighed several trillion trillion trillion tons. In the gravitational interaction between Voyager and, say, Jupiter, some of Jupiter's momentum was lost, which was Voyager's gain. The loss is not measurable by any equipment we have yet devised, but the effect on Voyager was spectacular, accelerating it to.... fancy that... around 8 miles a second. Go Newton!

  • no, that would be "ah-aaaah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ahhh.... oh-ah-aaaah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah.... ah-aaah-ah-ah-ah-u-u-u-aah-AAAAH-aah-aah... aaah-aaah".

    After careful reflection I would be inclined to agree with you. I still haven't figured out how to work in the percussion though (which is essential for the whole opening credits experience). Maybe I could insert a text block that sounded right when printed on a loud dot-matrix? Hmm....

    --8<--

  • Oh, traveller Bold into the blackness you spread the light. In shroud of yourself sail the distance between the stars.

  • Oh, traveller
    Bold into the blackness
    you spread the light.
    In shroud of yourself
    sail the distance between the stars.

  • Interesting... has Intel ever used Pioneer 10 as a marketing coup? I mean, powering one of the first human objects to travel in interstellar space has got to be one hell of a marketing claim...

  • Fixing (Score:4)

    by Steve Cox ( 207680 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2000 @02:43AM (#700537)
    Now NASA need a new mission with the goal of fetching Pioneer 10, and towing it back for repairs :)

    It would make a pretty impressive museum piece - the first man made object to go out of the solar system, and them come back agin!

  • So, if it failed to reposition itself, is there a chance that its signal will be picked up again within a year from now, when the earth moves back into the path of the signals?

    That's possible, but unlikely. I haven't gone to the trouble of reading the article, but I can come up with three different ways they could have lost communication with the probe:

    1. Transmitter failure.
    2. Rotational jets (or whatever it uses to aim itself) failure.
    3. Nudged off course/damaged by a chunk of rock (aka meteor/astroid).

    I suppose that mainstream media will cover this somewhat, considering the number of years that the thing worked perfectly and the historical role it played.

    --

  • I suppose that mainstream media will cover this somewhat, considering the number of years that the thing worked perfectly and the historical role it played.

    Yeah, right. This was a spectacular success, not a spectacular failure. Maybe a blurb on page 28...
  • Back in the seventies Nasa made beautiful, functional and sturdy spacecraft which would work for many years without fail.
    These days we get probes that are so blind that they crash into planets.

    Stop looking through your rose-coloured glasses!

    How much money was bugeted to NASA in the 70s compared to now? I'm sure it was a much higher percentage of the budget (or GDP or whatever). Of course if you've got money to burn you can build fantastic machines, but NASA is on a shoe string budget now (shame on you goverment!!) so of course the engineering will not be as "good".

    And don't say that these things worked perfectly, they had problems too. Not every thing on Pioneer(s) worked and they had to use backups.

    Probably the reason that it "lived" for so long is that they built in insane amounts of redundency in those things. They can no longer do that because of the costs involved, and besides, why spend $500m on one probe, when you can get two for $250 each?

  • If you really do not care about the issue so much then why do you bother to argue or paticipate in an argument?

    Because you are off topic. I wanted to read about a space probe - not an operating system review where you say nothing that hasn't been said 1000 times before. "M$ sucks"

    I'm not saying Windows (the 9x-series in particular) is a great OS - it's not. It's however nowhere near as bad as people seem to think here on Slashdot. For instance, like I said, I run Win98SE at home by choice. I have several Linux distros in my bookshelf, OS2/Warp4 and I could install Win2K if I wanted to. I've thought about Corel Linux.. But I'm still running Win98SE.. Why? Because it runs every single app I need and crashing is not a problem. I honestly can't rememeber when the OS would have crashed for me.. It's not a big deal for me and certainly not for the millions of "less than power users" out there.. That's all I'm saying. I'm not saying "expect less! lower the quality". Once we get apps such as Photoshop, Premiere and IE for Linux, I'll be more than happy to switch!

  • As opposed to back in the sixties, when NASA made beautiful, functional and sturdy spacecraft that smashed into the Moon? [nasa.gov] But worse yet, most of them failed for one reason or another! (e.g. didn't leave Earth orbit, cameras didn't work, and my favorite - missed the Moon entirely ;)

  • Re:Escape Velocity? (Score:3)

    by KjetilK ( 186133 ) <kjetil AT kjernsmo DOT net> on Tuesday October 17, 2000 @07:43AM (#700553) Homepage Journal
    I saw you corrected your own estimate, so I'll only comment on this:

    Also, isn't the Kupier Belt at around 70-100 AU?

    Last time I asked a friend who is studying these objects, he said that their characteristic is that they are mainly outside the orbit of Neptune, which is at about 30 AU. Where's Pluto? 40 AU? Anyway, it may be that there are Kuiper belt objects further out than this, but I think they generally have them a bit closer, but don't take my word for it.

    However, the termination shock is believed to be about that distance (in my undergrad courses, a back-of-an-envelope calculation said 75AU, it's obviously inaccurate), but it is heading in the wrong direction, but Voayger may go through it [nasa.gov].

  • They'd better call Solar System-side Rescue (Score:4)

    by Saraphale ( 65475 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2000 @01:38AM (#700558)

    In other news, the Automobile Association announced that it would be reviewing the terms of its contract with customers. Under discussion is clause 12a, which reads:

    12.a. The AA shall guarantee vehicle recovery and repair no matter the location and environmental conditions.

    An AA spokeperson said 'We will honour our existing contracts, but in future we may have to ask for an extra callout fee, depending on location.' The spokesperson refused to comment on the current state of NASA's account.

  • You forgot that advances in technology are now also applied to advances in management. So engineers instead of doing their jobs are making sure their KPIs are right, progress reports are on time and their meetings booked in MS Outlook. Do not expect the newer version to be more stable and more durable than the old one. These times are long gone. And it is really really sad.
  • Because it doesn't revolve around the Sun or Earth or any other body. Well, I am not sure if it rotates around the cente of our Galaxy or is able to leave its gravitation field as well.
  • Down below it was pointed out that NASA is hoping for just that.
    http://spaceprojects.arc.nasa.gov/Space_Projects/p ioneer/PNStat.html

  • Re:Pioner Plaque ingraving outliving humanity? (Score:5)

    by komet ( 36303 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2000 @08:09AM (#700574) Homepage
    "So, bwrrwg, how are you getting on deciphering that plaque?"

    "Well, I think I've figured most of it out. These symbols here tell us that they live on the third planet around a pretty normal star."

    "What about these squiggles?"

    "Well, qrrq, that's the puzzling thing. It seems to be a depiction of the people who sent out the device. Looks like they've got two sexes - pretty normal - and they look a bit like the tree people of Alderaan V. But..."

    "What?"

    "Well, it seems these people spend their lives... naked."

    "Naked?!?"

    "Without clothes, that's right. There's no sign of them on the engraving..."

    "No clothes?!?"

    "Yes, it's hard to believe, but.."

    "But how... how do they survive without clothes?"

    "They have some hot regions on their planet, perhaps, where they can survive without clothes.."

    "Not that, stupid. How do they communicate? How do they display their social standing? How can you possibly distinguish yourself without clothes?"

    "Don't be zzttzztcentric. Just because we have expensive clothes with brand labels and all that stuff doesn't mean these people have to. Perhaps they're better off, not having to overstretch their budget to buy Clvvm Klnnnwwnw stuff for their kids and stuff like that.."

    "So they don't have an economy?"

    "Well, just not like ours. No stock options or stuff like that. I suppose they're a barter economy like we were 1000000 moons ago."

    "But.."

    "I know what your thinking - how can such a primitive economic system generate a space program? We can only assume that these people all contribute to the greater good, building space probes, comforted in the knowledge that they're contributing to science."

    "Wow. What a peaceful place that must be!"

    "Yes, I think we can learn a lot from these "Earth" people."

    "Yeah. They must live like gods!"
  • Intel Outside... The Solar System!

    The real Threed's /. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.

    --Threed

  • Re:Pioneer 10 gone... (Score:3)

    by thogard ( 43403 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2000 @03:01AM (#700578) Homepage
    Its a another sad day for the space race.

    I was lucky enough to see it as it left this world.

    Its sad that its first mission is over but it still may complete its final mission of telling others about who created it.

    Sleep Pioneer, you've got a long way to go.
  • I believe he's refering to this gem [tfarchive.com]. It's about 7.3 megs though.
  • It's orbiting the center of the galaxy.


    ...phil

  • Re:Actually,... (Score:3)

    by rongen ( 103161 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2000 @03:06AM (#700582) Homepage

    Da Daaa da da da da Daaa.. Da da da da Daaa Daaa da da DAAAA da da da da Daaaaahhh.... Daaa da da da dadadada Daaaaaaaaadaaaa da da DA Da da dada DAAAA!!

    What the fruck is this supposed to be?

    It's the Star Trek theme from the OLD show! Don't you remember the Nomad episode?

    --8<--

  • Let's do the math! (Score:3)

    by erotus ( 209727 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2000 @03:54AM (#700587)
    It is truly hard to believe that this probe operated for 28 years and is in fact now 7 billion miles away from Earth. Let's consider the facts here: Earth's average distance from the sun is 93 million miles. Pluto, the furthermost planet, is on average a whopping 3.67 billion miles from the sun. Basically, this probe is 3.24 billion miles outside of our solar system and around 7.09 billion miles from our sun.

    These figures are pretty impressive. Now let's do some more math. I'm no mathmatician so please feel free to contradict me. Here we go: It took 28 years for this probe to go 7 billion miles. So this means the probe travels 250 million miles per year. This would then translate into 684,932 miles per day or 28,539 mph. Let's be even more specific - this would factor out to 476 miles per minute or 8 miles per second. Now, that's a speedy craft isn't it? Your numbers may differ, as I divided 7,000,000,000 by 28 and divided that by 365 and I didn't factor in leap years and I rounded the numbers off just for convenience sakes. Nonetheless, when you break it down it is pretty cool.
  • Isn't it great to know that even after the roaches reach out into space a tiny little picture of man and a woman will still hang out there.

    Rest in peace little guy, we're all riding with you.

  • Re:Cheaper, Better Faster? (Score:3)

    by boing boing ( 182014 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2000 @04:01AM (#700590) Journal
    Actually, the pride and sound engineering you are talking about are not the main cause of Pioneer 10's extended lifetime.

    The main cause is that we did not know what the space environment was like, so we built that spacecraft like a tank. It could have been a much more sophisticated spacecraft if we had known more, but instead it was built like a tank.

    The other main factor was Pioneer's source of power: four radioisotope thermoelectric generators.

  • A little spacecraft
    far away among the stars
    rest well, pioneer

  • Cheaper, Better Faster? (Score:4)

    by Overnight Delivery ( 239468 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2000 @01:47AM (#700598)
    It seems pretty obvious that Pioneer 10 was the product of a different era where pride and sound engineering was the goal.

    28 years of operation, that is simply increadible!

    I can't help but wonder if today's "Cheaper Better Faster" projects will last beyond their specs. Pioneer 10 like so much science before it has provided benifits that the originators never would have forseen.

    To the engineers and scientists that built it, I take my hat of too you.

  • what is happening right now is the probe is being used as spare parts by a highly advanced AI robot probe. The two will merge and become something more powerful than any of it's creators ever imagined...

    Da Daaa da da da da Daaa.. Da da da da Daaa Daaa da da DAAAA da da da da Daaaaahhh.... Daaa da da da dadadada Daaaaaaaaadaaaa da da DA Da da dada DAAAA!!

    5 year mission, eh? I engineering projects are always behind schedule in the future too!

    --8<--

  • I find it sad that the current administration at NASA are such small thinkers, who have no sense of the vast grandeur that is out there for the taking. What has happened to the days of projects which could excite the layman and scientist alike?

    Sure, they've had their budget cut, but that's no excuse for their playing it safe attitude which has led to public apathy and even more budget cuts. And without someone taking an interest in space, how will we ever see all that the Lord has created?

    Personally I think that NASA need to get back into the race for the stars before either the Europeans or the Chinese succeed where we have failed for a lack of drive and a sense of wonder. Surely we don't want the first men on Mars to plant the red flag of communism on such a brave new world?



    ---
    Jon E. Erikson

  • Re:Let's do the math! (Score:3)

    by crumley ( 12964 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2000 @05:51AM (#700616) Homepage Journal
    Well, Pioneer 10 isn't really believed to be out of the Solar System. The Solar System is usually defined to go out as far as the heliopause - which is the distance at which the magnetic field stops and the instellar space takes over. Right now that distance is believed to be be betwen 10 and 20 million miles from the Sun (see this article for details) [spacedaily.com].

    Anyway, the entire problem is ciomplicated by the fact the Sun's magnetic field is carried by the Solar wind, and there is believed to be an interstellar wind which interacts with the Solar wind. Because of these interactions and the shocks they cause, the heliosphere does not have a regular shape or size (its not really a sphere and its dimensions change over time depending on the conditions).

    --

  • I tried to look at the Pioneer plaque - but alas, I was at a public library and it assumed that it was pornography.
  • Have you no soul?
    Is your heart made of brass?
    Have you no shame?
    Then kiss my...

    How can you say what you did and then claim it had a finite lifespan? There's some logical inconsistency there.

    Its a pile of wires. But its loss is our own just as the wonders we saw through its instruments were.

  • Pioneer 10 not gone for good after all (Score:4)

    by high_bandwidth_user ( 54247 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2000 @08:43AM (#700629)
    It seems that Pioneer 10's signal may be reacquired within the next few months, according to NASA's latest Pioneer status page [nasa.gov].

    It seems that Pioneer 10's antenna pointing mechanism is not working well enough at the moment to accurately point its high-gain antenna at Earth. (It's apparently more than 1.4 degrees off, but we'll move into its beam again as the earth continues to orbit the sun -- projected time of reacquisition is December.) Once signal is reacquired, we'll see if JPL is able to fix the problem somehow, or if we'll be reduced to contacting Pioneer 10 only during certain times of the year when we happen to be within its signal cone.

  • If we're ever lucky enough to recover any of the four furthest space probes: Pioneer 10 & 11 and Voyager 1 & 2 in the future, would these respective probes belong to 1) NASA (or even a privatised NASA who'd probably sell it to the highest bidder), 2) the United States government 3) whoever recovered it, 4) Humanity as a whole, or should we 5) just let it drift off into eternity?

    Just a thought, but I hope that if we ever recover it as a symbol of us triumphing over the tyranny of astronomical distances, that it'd be placed into a museum (how much would the Smithsonian pay for this one?) or installed at the front of the UN. Perhaps there should be discussion - albeit farfetched for now - like those currently about the moon-landing site about drafting laws declaring them as historical monuments.

    A HREF="http://www.debianplanet.org">DebianPlanet


  • "The incredibly hardy, long-lived satellite, which long ago surpassed NASA's wildest expectations for its power supplies and other systems, may finally have drifted peacefully into eternal slumber . . . ."

    <sigh>

    We've been through some things together
    With trunks of memories still to come
    We found things to do in stormy weather
    Long may you run.

    Long may you run.
    Long may you run.
    Although these changes have come
    With your chrome heart shining in the sun
    Long may you run.

    - Neil Young, Long May You Run

  • Maybe signals can be picked up again next year? (Score:3)

    by Rolu ( 183097 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2000 @01:59AM (#700633)
    From the page: This time we don't really think there's anything wrong with our equipment, instead we think the spacecraft is pointing in the wrong direction. As the Earth orbits around the sun, Pioneer 10 needs to be told to reposition its high-gain transmitting antenna so that its signals reach the place where the Earth is today, and not where it was six months ago.

    So, if it failed to reposition itself, is there a chance that its signal will be picked up again within a year from now, when the earth moves back into the path of the signals?

  • Farewell, you will be missed. (Score:3)

    by Explo ( 132216 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2000 @02:01AM (#700636)

    I usually aren't sentimental about non-sentient and man-made things, but somehow the image of being so unbelieveably far from the place of origin and from anything else is quite moving. In addition, it managed to survive far longer than anyone initially expected and gathered far more information than planned. All in all, it deserves respect and a place in the history of space exploration.

    But there are still other probes out there, maybe they will even manage to survive as long or longer. I certainly wish so; we won't get anything new so far in near future and there are mysteries like where the influence of sun ends and interstellar space really beings to solve...

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