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The Planetary Society Blog

By Emily Lakdawalla

The final attempt to contact Pioneer 10

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Slava Turyshev has updated us on the Pioneer Anomaly Team's attempt to make one last contact with Pioneer 10. Sadly, it appears that the attempt failed, most likely because the spacecraft has either died or it just didn't have enough power for its transmitter, though they're going to keep pounding at their data to search for a faint signal.

There is a little more background information on this attempt in February 6 Planetary Radio Show with John Anderson, another member of the Pioneer Anomaly team. One mind-boggling detail from that recording is the fact that in order to try to make contact, they first needed to uplink a command to Pioneer 10 to transmit. So they uplinked the signal on March 3. The two-way light time between Earth and Pioneer 10 is just about one full day, so they had to wait one full Earth rotation, until the night of March 4, to listen and see if Pioneer 10 replied. It's that far away.

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