Pioneer 10

Welcome friends, voyager 1 , this spacecraft of nasa , is today away from earth 2400 cr kilometres away

And this is farthest object sent by humans, but do you know, in this list which name is there , voyager 2 , no it is the pioneer 10 , it was the first mission, by which humans, outer solar system dream was seen , and voyager great success was because of pioneer 10 sacrifice

In 1960 , nasa predicted a rare alignment of planets, it has to be happening in 1978, they were planning voyager, but the solar system journey, has to pass through Jupiter high gravity, we have no idea , which dangers , we have to face in the journey , voyager missions were highly anticipated and the budget was very high

That’s why in 1969 , nasa planned a experiment mission , pioneer 10

Pioneer 10 is a NASA space probe launched in 1972 that completed the first mission to the planet Jupiter. Pioneer 10 became the first of five planetary probes and 11 artificial objects to achieve the escape velocity needed to leave the Solar System

On 3 March 1972 , from Florida space centre, pioneer 10 was launched, after launch in 90 minutes, he entered space , and after 11 hours, it crossed the moon orbit,

After 11 days of launch, all the instruments of pioneer 10 were activated , and this space craft started to capture data of cosmic wind , cosmic rays , it was the first space craft to detect interplanetary helium

It detected, aluminium and sodium in cosmic rays , in the next three months , it cross the orbit of mars , and on 15 July 1972 , officially entered the asteroid belt , in asteroid belt , there is distance of lakhs kilometres from each other

On 6 November 1973 , it was away from Jupiter around 2 crore 50 lakh kilometres, away , it took several pictures of Jupiter and it’s moon gene made while approaching to Jupiter , and it took around 500 pictures of Jupiter , pioneer 10 has done infrared mapping of Jupiter

Officially, it’s mission has to end here , but scientists made some changes in it , so while moving in the orbit of Jupiter, it got a slingshot, by the gravity of Jupiter, and it jumps to the Saturn orbit

In 1976 , pioneer 10 , crossed Saturn orbit, at that time, in 1977 , voyager mission were launched, pioneer 10 in 1979 cross Uranus and in 1982 , cross Neptune orbit, but it crossed this planets orbit but from far away

And after crossing Neptune, it becomes the first space craft to cross all planets of solar system , one mission which duration was only 2 years , reaches 25 years in 1997 , and ends the journey