Pioneer 10/11

Mission Profile

Pioneer 10 and 11 were NASA spacecraft launched in 1972 and 1973 aboard Atlas SLV-3C Centaur-D rockets on the first missions to explore the outer solar system, flying past Jupiter and Saturn respectively before continuing into deep space as humanity's first emissaries to the stars. Pioneer 10's Jupiter flyby in December 1973 revealed the planet's intense radiation belts and returned the first close-up images of its cloud systems, while Pioneer 11 flew past Jupiter in 1974 and Saturn in 1979, discovering two previously unknown Saturnian moons and making the first close approach to Saturn's rings. Both spacecraft carried the Pioneer Plaque, an engraved gold-anodized aluminum message depicting humanity's location and form for any extraterrestrial intelligence that might encounter them. Pioneer 10 became the first spacecraft to cross the orbit of Neptune and enter the outer solar system in 1983, and its transmissions were last detected in 2003.