The Pioneer Program I was just surfing through the Pioneer Project's site. Reading through some of the material there made me think of how challenging, amazing and adventurous working on those missions must have been. The human race has come a long way, the world is much smaller, and the legacy of those baby steps into the solar system are still going. Pioneer 10 is now about 7.8 billion miles away (Voyager 1 passed it in 1998), and the last attempt to contact the spacecraft failed in Feb. of this year, most likely due to low power. Pioneer 11 last transmission was received in 1995, and it hasn't been heard from since. Pioneer 10 and 11, will take 2 & 4 million years respectively to reach the stars who's direction they're heading in. I wonder if they will be remembered then ... I wonder if people will be around to remember them then ... and more optimistically, I wonder if we'll be there to watch them arrive at their destinations - now that would be cool!

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