![]() Some scientists predict that Pioneer 10 is currently around 114.07 AU from the Earth and traveling at 12.04 km/s relative to the Sun and traveling outward at about 2.54 AU per year. Radio communications were lost with Pioneer 10 on January 23, 2003, because of the loss of electric power for its radio transmitter, with the probe at a distance of 12 billion km (80 AU) from Earth. ![]() During the mission, the on-board instruments were used to study the asteroid belt, the environment around Jupiter, the solar wind, cosmic rays, and eventually the far reaches of the Solar System and heliosphere, which is is the bubble-like region of space dominated by the Sun, which extends far beyond the orbit of Pluto. The closest approach to the planet was on December 4, 1973, at a range of 132,252 km. It began photographing Jupiter on November 6, 1973, at a range of 25,000,000 km, and a total of about 500 images were transmitted. It also carries various scientific instruments, such as a Helium Vector Magnetometer, a Quadrispherical Plasma Analyzer, a Charged Particle Instrument (CPI), a Cosmic Ray Telescope (CRT), a Geiger Tube Telescope (GTT), a Trapped Radiation Detector (TRD), Meteoroid Detectors, an Asteroid/Meteoroid Detector (AMD), a Ultraviolet Photometer, an Imaging Photopolarimeter (IPP), and an Infrared Radiometer.Ä«etween July 15, 1972, and February 15, 1973, it became the first spacecraft to traverse the asteroid belt. Its electric power was supplied by four radioisotope thermoelectric generators that provided a combined 155 watts at launch. Pioneer 10 was assembled around a hexagonal bus with a 2.74-meter diameter parabolic dish high-gain antenna, and the spacecraft was spin stabilized around the axis of the antenna. The project was conducted by the NASA Ames Research Center in California, and the space probe was manufactured by TRW Inc. ![]() Thereafter, Pioneer 10 became the first artificial object to achieve the escape velocity that will allow it to leave the Solar System only five crafts including Pioneer 11, Voyager 1 & 2, and New Horizons have achieved that. It was launched in 1972 by an Atlas-Centaur expendable vehicle from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and weighing 258 kilograms. Today marks the 46th anniversary of the launch of Pioneer 10, the very first probe to complete a mission to Jupiter.
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