| Neptune and Pluto,
exited the solar system in 1983 and is
now in what astronomers call the Kuiper
Belt, a ring of comets and other cosmic
debris that extends outward from the
fringes of the solar system. .....To Pioneer 10,
the sun is only a bright star. A nuclear
heater supplies power to Pioneer 10 and
the atomic element will continue to work
for hundreds of years. In about 30,000
years, the spacecraft will approach
another star.
.....The
nation got a bargain from Pioneer 10’s
$100 million cost. It lasted far longer
than expected and NASA has built up an
extensive library of deep-space data from
the craft.
|
