Gone but not forgotten

NASA scientists feared the worst for Pioneer 10 when they lost contact with it last August. This was the first person-made object to pass through our solar system’s asteroid belt, the first to take happy-snaps of Jupiter, and first-past-the-Pluto to

NASA scientists feared the worst for Pioneer 10 when they lost contact with it last August. This was the first person-made object to pass through our solar system's asteroid belt, the first to take happy-snaps of Jupiter, and first-past-the-Pluto to actually leave the solar system. And it's still going, as radio signals from Pioneer 10 have just been picked up by a radio antenna outside of Madrid, in Spain.

Currently Pioneer 10 is happily zipping along through interstellar space at a speed in excess of 27,000mph, and is still on target to reach a star in the Taurus constellation – in about two million years or so. The current round-trip time for radio signal to bounce its way out to Pioneer and back is over 21 hours, and it can only talk if talked to first – which is a quite a task given where it is and where it's going.

On the flank of the spacecraft there is a gold plaque with astronomical data and information on the human race, just is in case some merry ET should happen across it. Of course, if an unhappy one should find it, we're all doomed.
NASA's Pioneer 10 Web site