Pioneer 10 is an American space probe, launched in 1972 and weighing 260 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. Voyager 1 is a space probe launched by NASA on September 5, 1977, as part of the Voyager program to study the outer Solar System and interstellar space beyond the Sun's heliosphere. Before Voyager 1 Pioneer 10 was the farthest m

Pioneer 10, the first NASA mission to the outer planets, was launched on March 2, 1972, from Launch Complex 36A at Cape Canaveral. It garnered a series of firsts perhaps unmatched by any other robotic spacecraft in the space era: the first vehicle placed on a trajectory to escape the solar system into interstellar space, the first spacecraft to fly beyond Mars, the first to fly through the asteroid belt, the first to fly past Jupiter, the first to use all-nuclear electrical power, and the first

12K views · 226 reactions | On January 22, 2003, NASA's Pioneer 10...