{"id":410,"date":"2003-03-04T04:26:34","date_gmt":"2003-03-04T04:26:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/?p=410"},"modified":"2011-05-01T18:35:17","modified_gmt":"2011-05-01T23:35:17","slug":"a-farewell-to-nasas-brave-little-pioneer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/?p=410","title":{"rendered":"a farewell to NASA\u2019s brave little Pioneer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">NASA reported last week that it has finally lost  contact with its <em>Pioneer 10<\/em> spacecraft. Launched in 1972, the craft had  been in service for more than 30 years. <em>Pioneer<\/em> was the first probe to  pass through the asteroid belt, make direct observations of Jupiter, and  pass Pluto&#8217;s orbit. As Earth&#8217;s first emissary into deep space, it  carried a gold plaque describing what humans look like, a map showing  Earth&#8217;s location, and the date its mission began. On Jan. 22, Pioneer  sent its last, weak signal to Earth. Since then, further attempts to  contact the craft have been unsuccessful. It is believed that Pioneer&#8217;s  radioisotope power source has decayed, and that it doesn&#8217;t have enough  power to send additional transmissions. At last contact, Pioneer was 7.6  billion miles from Earth, coasting in the general direction of  Aldebaran, a star some 68 light years away. It will take the craft some  two million years to reach it. <\/span><\/p>\n<h6><em>This news brief appeared in the Random Data column of the <\/em>Boston Globe&#8217;s<em> Health\/Science section on 3\/04\/2003.<\/em><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NASA reported last week that it has finally lost contact with its Pioneer 10 spacecraft. Launched in 1972, the craft had been in service for more than 30 years. Pioneer was the first probe to pass through the asteroid belt, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/?p=410\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-boston-globe-3","category-news-briefs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=410"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1228,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410\/revisions\/1228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}