{"id":1500,"date":"2013-06-13T10:18:40","date_gmt":"2013-06-13T14:18:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.graymanwrites.com\/blog\/?p=1500"},"modified":"2013-06-13T10:18:40","modified_gmt":"2013-06-13T14:18:40","slug":"pioneer-leaves-the-solar-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/pioneer-leaves-the-solar-system\/","title":{"rendered":"Pioneer Leaves the Solar System"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thirty years ago today — June 13, 1983 — the Pioneer 10 spacecraft left the solar system, becoming the first man-made object to pass beyond the farthest planet from the Sun.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n(Pioneer. NASA image.)<\/em><\/p>\n

At the time, Pluto was still considered a planet but its eccentric orbit had it inside the orbit of Neptune. So when Pioneer 10<\/a> passed beyond Neptune’s orbit, it became the first spacecraft to travel farther from the sun than our system’s planets.<\/p>\n

In other space history, 5 years ago this week* — on June 11, 2008 — the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope<\/a> launched from Cape Canaveral on a Delta-II rocket. Originally called the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope, Fermi was designed to conduct a sky survey of gamma ray sources. Its mission objectives were to<\/p>\n

(1) explore the most extreme environments in the universe;
\n(2) search for signs of new laws of physics and understand the composition of dark matter;
\n(3) study the acceleration of relativistic velocity jets of material by black holes;
\n(4) detect and collect data on gamma-ray bursts; and,
\n(5) help gain a better understanding of other cosmic phenomena, such as solar flares, pulsars, and the origin of cosmic rays.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Fermi is still operating, and you can learn more about it and its discoveries here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

___
\n*Missed posting this on the actual anniversary because of problems accessing the National Space Science Data Center.<\/em><\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>by <\/span>\"feather\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thirty years ago today — June 13, 1983 — the Pioneer 10 spacecraft left the solar system, becoming the first man-made object to pass beyond the farthest planet from the Sun. (Pioneer. NASA image.) At the time, Pluto was still considered a planet but its eccentric orbit had it inside \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[26,416,134,11],"class_list":["post-1500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space","tag-launch","tag-neptune","tag-pluto","tag-space-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1500"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1501,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1500\/revisions\/1501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}