![]() ![]() Voyager photographed Jupiter and its moons from January to April of 1979 with a closest approach of 349,000 km in March. It is expected to continue to keep sending data until 2025 when its power supply is expected to give out. It is now probably most famous for being the first man made object to leave the Solar System (which is did in 2012) and enter interstellar space. Voyager 1 was actually launched 2 weeks after Voyager 2 but due to a shorter trajectory it was the first of the two to reach Jupiter and Saturn. The moons had been tentatively discovered from earth but the fact that there were actually two of them caused confusion which was not properly resolved until Voyager 1 in 1980.Īfter discovering another small moon and sending back the first images of Saturn's rings from the other side of the planet, Pioneer 11 then headed for interstellar space with last contact in September, 1995. ![]() It passed a moon Epimetheus (or perhaps Janus - both moons occupy the same orbit and keep swapping places every four years) at a few thousand kilometres distance. Pioneer 11's encounter with Saturn was quite eventful in that it narrowly missed colliding with a moon. Luckily all went well and Pioneer 11 was able to photograph Jupiter's Great Red Spot in detail and passed the planet at a distance of about 43,000 km. If Pioneer 11 had been destroyed because of unexpected dust in its path then the Voyagers would have been diverted. It was decided to use Pioneer in true sense of its name to test out the entry path of the Voyagers through Saturn's ring system. It then journeyed on to become the first spacecraft to visit Saturn.īy the time Pioneer reached Saturn it was being closely followed by the Voyager probes. Following close behind, it was the second spacecraft to cross the asteroid belt and visit Jupiter. Pioneer 11 was launched just over a year later than its twin. The last contact with Pioneer 10 was in January, 2003, at a distance of 12 billion kilometres (80 AU) from Earth. Causing a lot of head scratching at the time, this was subsequently been explained by factoring in the force created by heat radiating from the spacecraft into space. Studying Pioneer 10 (and Pioneer 11) as it journeyed away from the sun showed that they were experiencing a tiny but unexpected acceleration in the direction of the sun which was called the "Pioneer Anomaly". It also photographed Ganymede and Europa before continuing its journey towards interstellar space. It passed Jupiter at a range of 130,000km in December, 1974, taking some 500 images during its mission as well as studying the asteroids, solar wind, cosmic rays and the radiation and magnetic conditions around Jupiter. ![]() ![]() It was launched in 1972 and began photographing Jupiter from November, 1973. Pioneer 10 was the first Spacecraft to visit Jupiter and the first to traverse the Asteroid belt and to achieve solar system escape velocity and is now heading out of the Solar System. You can select the appropriate spacecraft from the drop down menu if you wish to keep it at the centre of the screen. To watch the whole journey you will have to take control of the application and rewind to the required launch date and then fast forward at your chosen pace to see the whole journey. Launch DatesĪll of these spacecraft were launched in the 1970's and were the first probes to visit the outer planets and to then continue on a course to leave the solar system (as Voyager 1 has done). To watch just the voyagers, and follow their path from launch till now, please see the voyager flight path tour page. This page shows the positions of the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft as they are now and also how they got there. Pioneer 10 and 11 and Voyager I and II Flight Paths Where Are Pioneer 10, 11 and Voyager I and II Spacecraft? ![]()
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