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Pioneer 10 Program

NASA’s Pioneer 10 program sent the first spacecraft to the outer planets and established a series of deep-space firsts: crossing the asteroid belt, flying beyond Mars, flying past Jupiter, and traveling onto an escape trajectory from the solar system. Launched on 2 March 1972, Pioneer 10 returned pioneering Jupiter and heliospheric measurements and sent its last signal to Earth on 23 January 2003.

Pioneer 10 Program
NASA — Pioneer 10 at Jupiter · NASA's current Images and Media Usage Guidelines state that NASA content is generally not subject to U.S. copyright and may be used factually for editorial or informational purposes, subject to the stated restrictions, credit, and no implied endorsement. The official Pioneer 10 resource credits NASA; that credit is preserved here. This unmodified mission image contains no identifiable person or NASA logo and is used only for factual identification of the Pioneer 10 Program, without endorsement or affiliation. · Source

Identity

Aliases
Pioneer 10Pioneer-FPioneer Jupiter MissionPioneer 1972
Domains
spaceflight
Name
Pioneer 10 Program
Status
completed
Types
explorationscienceresearchoperations

Details

Description
NASA’s Pioneer 10 program sent the first spacecraft to the outer planets and established a series of deep-space firsts: crossing the asteroid belt, flying beyond Mars, flying past Jupiter, and traveling onto an escape trajectory from the solar system. Launched on 2 March 1972, Pioneer 10 returned pioneering Jupiter and heliospheric measurements and sent its last signal to Earth on 23 January 2003.
End Date
2003-01-23
Leads
Parent Program
Participants
-
Start Date
1972-03-02

Assets & Meta

Creation Time
August 13, 2026 at 14:36:00 UTC
Updated Time
August 23, 2026 at 01:33:03 UTC
Image
Download

Other

Official Urls
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/pioneer-10/https://www.nasa.gov/history/50-years-ago-pioneer-10-launches-to-explore-jupiter/https://science.nasa.gov/resource/pioneer-10-at-jupiter/https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/45-years-ago-pioneer-10-became-first-spacecraft-pass-through-asteroid-belt/