Pioneer 11:
Passing 43,000 km (26,725 miles) above
Jupiter's cloudtop, Pioneer 11
followed
Pioneer 10 as the second spacecraft to visit Jupiter
and the outer solar system. Nabbing a gravity assist from Jupiter, Pioneer 11 then went
on to be the first spacecraft to visit
Saturn. On the journey to Jupiter
and during the planetary encounter, instruments aboard Pioneer 11 measured the
interplanetary and planetary magnetic fields, solar wind, cosmic rays, the transition region
between the heliosphere and Jupiter's magnetosphere, the abundance of neutral hydrogen,
characteristics of dust particles, and the atmosphere and surfaces of Jupiter and some of
its satellites. Pioneer 11 sent home dramatic images of Jupiter's Great Red Spot and was
able to determine the mass of Jupiter's moon,
Callisto. Like its predecessor,
Pioneer 11 carried a plaque depicting life on
Earth, showing a man, a woman, and
the location of the
Sun and Earth in the
galaxy. The power source for the spacecraft was exhausted in 1995, so we can no longer
communicate with it.
Visit the Pioneer 11 Website
Both Pioneer 10 and 11 carried a plaque describing the spacecraft, human beings and the location of our solar system.
