Goodbye, Pioneer 10

I got this e-mail from Larry Kellogg today:

"Good day,

Well I guess all good things must come to an end. I have started to break down the PDP11/44 computer hardware used for sending commands to Pioneer 10. I have boxed the PC Osprey from Strobe Data Inc. (http://www.strobedata.com/home/home.html) that would have let us send commands to Pioneer 10 had we needed to do so...

The last attempt to listen to Pioneer 10 we should have been bore sighted and Spain didn't see anything. The bus voltage had been getting lower and SETI had said they saw a lower power level the last time they tracked it.

You know what it is like to have a flash light battery get weak. The light just gets dimmer and dimmer. When you only start out with an eight watt transmitter, that is now less and less, you reach a point where the noise here on Earth is stronger than the signal you are looking for.

Thirty years of flying away can do that. Being 82.24 AU (82 times the distance of Earth from the Sun) makes it even harder to hear what you are saying, if in fact you had the strength to say something.

When I finish cleaning out, will go to half time also. Will give me more time at home to talk with you folks. Will watch with you and look up as we go to Mars...

I would really like to see us do more than just take pictures, but will take what I can get. (http://www.KelloggSerialReports.net/)

--- Dare To Dream, I Do. --- LRK ---

Larry"

It's not a sad day in the tragic sense, but in the sense of another page of history turned. Pioneer 10 is something I grew up with and it boggles the mind to think that this spaceship has been up there 30 years and is now heading towards a star that forms the eye in the constellation of Taurus (Aldebaran).

Farewell, Pioneer 10.

Keep the faith,

-N.