NASA announced Tuesday, February 25, that Pioneer 10, the first man-made spacecraft to venture outside of our solar system, had fallen silent after more than three decades and billions of miles in flight. NASA does not plan to attempt further communication with the craft.
Launched March 2, 1972, Pioneer 10 was on a 21-month mission. It was the first spacecraft to pass through the asteroid belt and continued on its way to Jupiter to obtain close-up images of the gas giant, then continued on its way toward the outer reaches of our solar system.
In 1983, it passed the orbit of Pluto — leaving our solar system behind and continuing toward the distant star Aldebaran (in the constellation Taurus). At its current speed, it will take Pioneer 10 approximately 2 million years to reach the distant solar system.
Despite its planned mission, the spacecraft continued to transmit telemetry. Because of its great distance from Earth, scientists continued to track it via its telemetry broadcasts as part of NASA's communication technology research for the future Interstellar Probe mission. Even after ending its mission officially in 1997, the spacecraft continued sending telemetry and continued to be tracked.
On April 27, 2002, Earth received its final complete broadcast from Pioneer 10.
Even after it stopped sending full telemetry data, Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Deep Space Network was still able to track Pioneer 10 via faint broadcasts — the last of which occurred on January 22, 2003. At the time of that broadcast, the spacecraft was 7.6 billion miles from Earth and had been traveling for almost 31 years.
From that distance, it took the signal, moving at the speed of light, approximately 11 hours and 20 minutes to arrive. NASA and JPL report that the signals received on January 22 and the two previous signals were extremely faint.
The Deep Space Network made a final attempt at contact on February 7 of this year, but they heard nothing. No further attempts will be made to contact the spacecraft.
Larry Asher, the Pioneer 10 project manager at NASA's Ames Research Center, said, "It was a workhorse that far exceeded its warranty, and I guess you could say we got our money's worth."
The Pioneer 10 spacecraft carries on it a gold plaque engraved with a map showing the location of Earth within our solar system. The plaque also includes a message of goodwill.
You can find the official NASA press release and additional information about Pioneer 10 here.