Grand Old Lady Continues to Thrill and Fascinate

Post by **Airconvent** » Mon Sep 25, 2006 12:20 am

Its pretty amazing for all the distance, she's only about 15.4 light hours away only! ...

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006 ... ?list77015

rlow · Post by **rlow** » Mon Sep 25, 2006 11:41 pm

I wonder how far away is Pioneer 10 by now?

Post by **weixing** » Tue Sep 26, 2006 12:12 am

Hi,

I wonder how far away is Pioneer 10 by now?

No idea... they lost contact with Pioneer 10 at 2003 and never received any signal from it to date.

Have a nice day.

Post by **Airconvent** » Tue Sep 26, 2006 1:22 am

Actually currently the most distance man made object presently is Voyager 1.
It will remain so until Cochrane develops the Warp Engine and takes man's very first trip to the stars..

Actually, Voyager1 which was launched much later than Pioneer is further because it took advantage of a rare planetary alignment and gotten a bigger gravity boost from most of the outer gas giants.

As of 15 Aug 2006, it hit 100 A.U. from Earth. Pioneer 10, 11 and Voyager is closer.

Unfortunately, Pioneer's thermocouple which converts radioative power to electrical power was failing , so the available power to the transmitter got weaker and weaker until one fine day, the receivers here on earth can no longer differentiate its signal above the background noise. She's still transmitting, just too weak for us to pick up now. Slowly she glides onwards to Aldebaran in Taurus.

Let's hope V2 and V1 will be able to last another 30 years so that it will exit the confines of our solar system into real space between the stars.Not too sure by then will the signal be still receivable by us...