Outward Bound
By: Hubert Crowell
September 5, 2007 marks 30 years of space travel for our most distant spacecraft. Voyager 1
reached 9,648,812,870 miles from earth on the 30th anniversary of it's September 5, 1977 launch
from Cape Canaveral aboard a Titan-Centaur rocket.
There are actually four man made objects speeding out of our solar system and all launched in the
70's at the height of the cold war. We were thinking about fallout shelters and how to survive
WW III at the time. Following the space program was our most positive news. Pioneer 10 was
launched on March 2, 1972, followed by Pioneer 11 on April 5, 1973. Voyager 2 was launched
on August 20, 1977 and all three were passed by Voyager 1 traveling at about 38,306 miles per
hour.
Pioneer 10 is the second furthest manmade object in space, traveling at about 27,665 miles per
hour in the opposite direction of the other three. It is headed in the opposite direction of the Sun's
motion through our galaxy. At the end of this year (2007), Pioneer 10 will be 8,849,392,731
miles from earth. Pioneer has been traveling longer (35 years) and was the first to leave our solar
system on June 13, 1983 when it passed beyond the orbit of Pluto. Pioneer 10 was the most
distance manmade object until February 17, 1998 when Voyager 1 took over the title. Pioneer 10
will reach the red star Albebaran in about 2 million years. Albebaran is 71 light years away in
the constellation Taurus.
The last telemetry data received from Pioneer 10 was on April 27, 2002. The last very weak signal was received on January 22, 2003. It's radioisotope power source has decayed, and it may not have enough power to send any more transmissions to us.
1 AU = 149597870 kilometers = 92955806 miles = 499 light-seconds. One light-year equals 63240 AU.
To learn more about the Pioneer and Voyager space craft, visit the following NASA web sites:
http://history.nasa.gov/SP-349/contents.htm SP-349/396 PIONEER ODYSSEY online Book
http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/window/voyager_ad.htm Voyager Flash Story and more.
http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/science/thirty.html Voyager 30 year mission.
http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/mission.html Voyager Overview.
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