page_title: Pioneer 10
section_title: Current status and future
hierarchical_section_title: Pioneer 10 / Current status and future
caption_attribution_description: English: Position of Pioneer 10 spacecraft from above solar system on 8 Feb 2012
context_page_description: Pioneer 10 is an American space probe, launched in 1972 and weighing 258 kilograms, that completed the first mission to the planet Jupiter. Thereafter, Pioneer 10 became the first of five artificial objects to achieve the escape velocity needed to leave the Solar System. This space exploration project was conducted by the NASA Ames Research Center in California, and the space probe was manufactured by TRW Inc.
  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. Its electric power was supplied by four radioisotope thermoelectric generators that provided a combined 155 watts at launch.
  It was launched on March 2, 1972, by an Atlas-Centaur expendable vehicle from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Between July 15, 1972, and February 15, 1973, it became the first spacecraft to traverse the asteroid belt. Photography of Jupiter began November 6, 1973, at a range of 25,000,000 kilometers, and about 500 images were transmitted. The closest approach to the planet was on December 4, 1973, at a range of 132,252 kilometers.
context_section_description: On January 3, 2019, Pioneer 10 was predicted to be 122.594 au from the Earth (about 11.4 billion miles); and traveling at 11.947 km/s (26,720 mph) (relative to the Sun) and traveling outward at about 2.52 au per year. Voyager 2 is expected to pass Pioneer 10 around April 2023. Sunlight takes 14.79 hours to reach Pioneer 10. The brightness of the Sun from the spacecraft is magnitude −16.3. Pioneer 10 is currently in the direction of the constellation Taurus.
  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. If Aldebaran had zero relative velocity, it would require more than two million years for the spacecraft to reach it. But well before that, in about 90,000 years, Pioneer 10 will pass about 0.23 pc (0.75 ly) from the late K-type star HIP 117795. This is the closest stellar flyby in the next few million years of all the four Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft which are leaving the Solar System.
  A backup unit, Pioneer H, is currently on display in the "Milestones of Flight" gallery at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. Many elements of the mission proved to be critical in the planning of the Voyager program.
caption: Position of Pioneer 10 on February 8, 2012
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