Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
If left undisturbed, Pioneer 10 and its sister craft Pioneer 11 will join the two Voyager spacecraft and the New Horizons spacecraft in leaving the Solar System to wander the interstellar medium. The Pioneer 10 trajectory is expected to take it in the general direction of the star Aldebaran, currently located at a distance of about 68 light years.
Pioneer 10 – launched in 1972, flew past Jupiter in 1973 and is heading in the direction of Aldebaran (65 light years away) in the constellation of Taurus.Contact was lost in January 2003, and it is estimated to have passed 134 astronomical units (AU; one AU is roughly the average distance between Earth and the Sun: 150 million kilometers (93 million miles)).
The estimated time until the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Sun today, at a distance of 4.25 light-years, leaves the main sequence and becomes a white dwarf. [136] 10 13 (10 trillion) The estimated time of peak habitability in the universe, unless habitability around low-mass stars is suppressed. [137] 1.2×10 13 (12 ...
The current distance between the Sun and Pioneer 10 is available on heavens-above.com, so Pioneer 10 is 133.767 AU from the Sun. In miles and kilometers, the current distance is available here . In distance to Earth, hoverer, Voyager 2 will overtake Pioneer 10 on September 23, 2023, when using theskylive.com. 178.95.99.242 ( talk ) 07:11, 18 ...
The last successful reception of telemetry from Pioneer 10 was on April 27, 2002, when it was at a distance of 80.22 AU, and the last signal from the spacecraft was received on January 23, 2003, at a distance 82 AU from the Sun traveling at about 2.54 AU/year (12 km/s). [23]
It was also contacted in 2003 when it was a distance of 7.6 billion miles from Earth (82 AU), but no instrument data about the solar wind was returned then. [68] [69] Voyager 1 surpassed the radial distance from the Sun of Pioneer 10 at 69.4 AU on 17 February 1998, because it was traveling faster, gaining about 1.02 AU per year. [70]
Pioneer 9 (Pioneer D) – launched November 1968 (inactive since 1983) Pioneer E – lost in launcher failure August 1969; Pioneer 6 and Pioneer 9 are in solar orbits with 0.8 AU distance to the Sun. Their orbital periods are therefore slightly shorter than Earth's. Pioneer 7 and Pioneer 8 are in solar orbits with 1.1 AU distance to the Sun.
The effect is an extremely small acceleration towards the Sun, of (8.74 ± 1.33) × 10 −10 m/s 2, which is equivalent to a reduction of the outbound velocity by 1 km/h over a period of ten years. The two spacecraft were launched in 1972 and 1973.