NASA Pioneer Missions
Signals to earth
Years of sending signals to earth
After more than 30 years it appears the venerable pioneer 10 spacecraft has sent its last signal to earth. Pioneers last every week has received on the 23rd of January 2003.
A final attemt
One final attemt was made to locate pioneers to signal on March 3-5 2006 but failed to receive a response detection of carrier signal from the spacecraft. Launched on 2nd of March 1972, pioner 10 was the first through the asteriod belt,.
Pioneer 5
Goal
Pioneer 5 was sent into an orbit between Earth and Venus on March 11th 1960, to test the magnetic field between the two planets.
Technology Used
Pioneer 5 carried Telebit, the first digital telemetry system.
Accomplishments
It was also the first to observe the interplanetary magnetic field between Earth and Venus.
Pioneer 6,7,8 and 9
Goal Pioneer 7 was the second in a series of solar orbiters designed to measure, from widely separated points in space on a continuing basis, interplanetary phenomena such as the Sun's magnetic field, the solar wind, and solar and galactic cosmic rays.
AccomplishmentsPioneers 6, 7, 8, and 9 formed a ring of solar-weather stations, spaced approximately along Earth's orbit, whose measurements were used to predict solar storms. Pioneer 7 recorded Earth's magnetic tail more than 19 million km from the planet, 3 times further than previously recorded. During the visit by Halley's comet to the inner solar ssytem in 1986, the spacecraft observed the interaction between the comet's hydrogen tail and the solar wind.