Pioneer 10 requiem

[arcticpenguin]

http://spaceprojects.arc.nasa.gov/Space_Projects/pioneer/PNhome.html

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/02/25/pioneer.10.ap/index.html

Pioneer 10, a spacecraft launched by NASA in 1972 for a 21 month mission, is now out of contact. NASA hasn't heard from it for over a month. Pioneer 10 is now over 7.6 billion miles from Earth, that 11 and a third light hours.

Pioneer 10 carries a gold plaque engraved with a message of goodwill and a map showing the Earth's location in the solar system. The spacecraft continues to coast toward the star Aldebaran in the constellation Taurus. It will take 2 million years to reach it.

To infinity and beyond!

[Soapy Sam]

ALIENS ABDUCT EARTH SPACECRAFT! SHOCK! HORROR!
(See page 3).

[Walter Wayne]

What a shame.

Last I heard they were hoping to get a geiger counter reading when it passed out of the heliosphere. Though it sounded like a pipe dream.

Walt

[Fidelio]

Other JREF salutations to Pioneer 10 (http://66.192.47.137/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=14704)

[Plutarck]

Just like kids. They don't call, they don't write...

[Rob Lister]

Originally posted by Plutarck
Just like kids. They don't call, they don't write...

And yet both P11 and P10 may have told us something very very important...or very mundane...

They've told us something but can we figure out what?

snip:

It was in 1980 that John Anderson first wondered if something funny was going on with gravity.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory physicist was looking over data from two Pioneer spacecraft that had been speeding through the solar system for nearly a decade.

Only something was off base. The craft weren't where they were supposed to be.

Rather than traveling at a constant velocity of more than 25,000 mph toward the edge of the solar system, Pioneers 10 and 11 were inexplicably slowing down. Even factoring in the gravitational pull of the sun and its other planets couldn't explain what he was seeing.

How could that be?

Source:
http://www.latimes.com/la-sci-pioneer21dec21.story

A well written article.

[Skeptical Greg]

I still think giving everyone in the universe directions on how to get here, is going to bite us in the butt some day..

[garys_2k]

Originally posted by Rob Lister
And yet both P11 and P10 may have told us something very very important...or very mundane...

They've told us something but can we figure out what?

Source:
http://www.latimes.com/la-sci-pioneer21dec21.story

A well written article.
My favorite explanation for that anamoly is braking caused by photons (IR radiation) emitted from their nuclear decay generators pushing them back, against the direction of travel.

[B.S]

Originally posted by Diogenes
I still think giving everyone in the universe directions on how to get here, is going to bite us in the butt some day..

Maybe, but I think any creatures smart enough to be able to travel the distances nescessary to get here could probably find our location by simply retracing the path of the probe.

[Skeptical Greg]

Originally posted by garys_2k
My favorite explanation for that anamoly is braking caused by photons (IR radiation) emitted from their nuclear decay generators pushing them back, against the direction of travel. But wouldn't those be emitted in all directions?

[Skeptical Greg]

Originally posted by B.S
Maybe, but I think any creatures smart enough to be able to travel the distances nescessary to get here could probably find our location by simply retracing the path of the probe. How could they do that? Won't the path be altered all sorts of ways, by every gravitational field it encounters?

[B.S]

Yeah, that makes sense. I guess it depends on how far its traveled, how long its been out there, what it has encountered. If no major influences have affected it, it might still be possible.