DSN Makes Contact with Pioneer 10
The Pioneer Project Office at Ames Research Center sent their thanks to the many people at the Deep Space Network at JPL, Goldstone California, and Madrid, Spain who made it possible to contact Pioneer 10 on the 30th anniversary of its launch.
They report that Pioneer is still healthy and was able to execute two commands sent from Goldstone using the transmitter
on the 70-meter antenna. The original contact signal was sent from Goldstone and confirmation of the contact was received
22 hours later by the Madrid station.
"We're going to try again this year to see if Pioneer 10 still lives on," said Pioneer 10 Flight Director David Lozier of NASA Ames Research Center, located in the heart of California's Silicon Valley. "We are hopeful that the successful contacts with the spacecraft that we had last year will be repeated this year."
NASA made contact with the spacecraft in April of last year. It was the first time the spacecraft had been heard from since the previous summer.
Further information about Pioneer 10 is available on the project web site located at: http://spaceprojects.arc.nasa.gov/Space_Projects/pioneer/PNhome.html
