40 Years (and 1 day) ago, Pioneer 10 took its first up-close shots of Jupiter - Polidicks

[quote=Yahoo]On Dec. 4, 1973, exactly 40 years ago this week, NASA's Pioneer 10 probe beamed the first up-close images of Jupiter back home. [B]After traveling away from Earth for more than a year and navigating a risky route through the asteroid belt, Pioneer 10 became the first spacecraft to reach Jupiter, sailing within 81,000 miles (130,000 kilometers) of the planet's cloud tops.[/B] The mission paved the way for more ambitious explorations of the solar system, and several more spacecraft visited Jupiter in the decades that followed, including Voyager 1 and 2, the Galileo spacecraft, the Saturn-bound Cassini-Huygens and New Horizons probe en route to Pluto. Those probes sent back even more amazing color portraits of the gas giant, its swirling storms and its polar auroras. [B]In 2011, NASA launched its $1.1 billion Juno mission to study Jupiter. It should arrive at the planet in 2016.[/B] [B]Pioneer 10 sent it last signal back to Earth in January 2003 from billions of miles away. [/B]It is expected to eventually join Voyager 1 as one of the few manmade objects to leave our solar system. [B]In case Pioneer 10 ever ends up in the hands of extraterrestrials, the spacecraft and its sister vehicle Pioneer 11 both carry gold plaques to describe where they came from, with images of a man and woman as well as a diagram of our solar system.[/B] The plaques, which were co-designed by SETI founder Frank Drake and television host and astronomer Carl Sagan, inspired the golden records aboard Voyager 1 and 2.[/quote] [URL]http://news.yahoo.com/40-years-ago-nasa-39-pioneer-10-snaps-171144531.html[/URL] [quote]On Dec. 4, 1973, NASA's Pioneer 10 spacecraft send back images of Jupiter increasing in size as it approached the gas giant.[/quote] [IMG]http://l2.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/HysxoqQedw9tBDAUTlGuIA--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTQ0NjtweW9mZj0wO3E9NzU7dz01NzU-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_US/News/SPACE.com/40_Years_Ago_NASA's_Pioneer-40158976ef9849754c2695e771238186[/IMG] That picture is incredible, can you imagine what must have gone through those scientist's heads as these images came back, one by one, Jupiter slowing increasing in size. Being the first group of people to ever see the planet in all it's glory for the first time? Here's to another 40 years of space missions!

This just made me realize, that in about six years, it'll be the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11. And in just six days, it'll be 41 years since any man has stood upon the moon. While there isn't any practical reason to put men on the moon anymore, it's still a sad state of affairs that we haven't been proactive on discovering more wonders that our little suburb contains.

[QUOTE=Redswandir;43085724]This just made me realize, that in about six years, it'll be the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11. And in just six days, it'll be 41 years since any man has stood upon the moon. While there isn't any practical reason to put men on the moon anymore, it's still a sad state of affairs that we haven't been proactive on discovering more wonders that our little suburb contains.[/QUOTE]There are plenty of practical reasons.

[video=youtube;Nz0b4STz1lo]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nz0b4STz1lo[/video]

In about a year and a half, we will be getting first close up images of Pluto.

I just looked up the "sounds of jupiter" video and then went to the "Earth Song" one in the suggested list. Geez people are ignorant. [IMG]http://u.cubeupload.com/Chinook249/ignorance.png[/IMG]

[QUOTE=Chinook249;43086280]I just looked up the "sounds of jupiter" video and then went to the "Earth Song" one in the suggested list. Geez people are ignorant. [IMG]http://u.cubeupload.com/Chinook249/ignorance.png[/IMG][/QUOTE] Those videos aren't actual recordings of electromagnetic waves recovered from the planets and converted to sound waves as suggested. They're ambient space music pieces that keep being posted as sounds from space when they're not. These are real: [url]http://www-pw.physics.uiowa.edu/voyager/v2pws_jupiter_arrival.html[/url]