![]() ''We are constantly entering unexplored territory,'' says Dr. The spacecraft may also function long enough to report back the answer to the question, Where does the solar system end and interstellar space begin? It might locate the source of the mysterious force tugging at Uranus and Neptune, a gravitational force suggesting the presence of some as yet unseen object - perhaps the long-sought Planet X or a dim companion star to the Sun. It might be able to detect gravity waves, which have been theorized but have never been observed. If the spacecraft survives long enough and the scientists are clever enough, more exciting discoveries could lie ahead for Pioneer 10. A virtual vacuum it may be, but nothingness, it seems, is a relative condition. A tenuous wind of solar particles, the million-mile-an-hour solar wind, still blows outward. It is cold and dark and empty, as they knew it must be. And by the time the signals arrive at tracking antennas, they have all but vanished, their strength reduced to 20-billionths of a watt.īut scientists with the patience to extract the signals out of the background noise and to decipher their messages are learning for the first time what it is like in the outermost solar system. The transit time of these reports, traveling at the speed of light, is 4 hours and 16 minutes. Pioneer 10 has traveled to the reaches of Pluto, a distance it achieved yesterday, and is advancing toward the edge of the solar system.įrom out there, now 2.7 billion miles away, Pioneer's eight-watt radio transmitter sends faint messages back to Earth every day, whispers of discovery. ![]() No machine of human design has ever gone so far. OUT there, far, far away where Earth is a mere pinpoint of light and the Sun is a pale disk of diminishing consequence, a hardy little spacecraft cruises on and on into the unexplored. ![]()
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