Smaller asteroids could not be detected from Earth, and there was a substantial fear that millimeters-wide particles were common and passing through the belt could end up being catastrophic for the spacecraft. measuring the magnetic fields in interplanetary spaceĪs Pioneer 10 was the first spacecraft to pass through the asteroid belt, scientists were not actually sure how dense the belt was.Pioneer 10 was also key to making a number of significant scientific discoveries and observations, including: Until it was outpaced by Voyager 1 in 1998, it was the farthest man-made object from Earth. It was the first spacecraft to travel to the asteroid belt, the first to make a close observation of Jupiter, and the first to leave the solar system on June 13th, 1983. It passed the Moon’s orbit after only 11 hours, and Mars’ orbit after just 12 weeks! After the third stage burnout, the spacecraft was traveling at 14.4 kilometers per second - at the time it was the fastest man-made object ever to leave the Earth/Moon system. On March 3, 1972, at 01:49 UTC, Pioneer 10 launched on top of an Atlas-Centaur SLV-3C with a Star 37E third stage, the first time this configuration had flown. This week in Rocket History we once again have a carryover from last week, but this time of year seems to be very popular for launches, or at least it used to be.
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