The Pioneer program is a series of United States unmanned space missions that were designed for planetary exploration. There were a number of such missions in the program, but the most notable were Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11, which explored the outer planets and left the solar system. Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 carry a golden plaque, depicting a man and a woman and information about the origin and the creators of the probes, should any extraterrestrials find them someday.
The earliest missions were attempts to achieve Earth’s escape velocity, simply to show it was feasible and study the Moon. This included the first launch by NASA which was formed from the old NACA. These missions were carried out by the US Air Force and Army.
This post was published on June 9, 2016 11:46 pm
This article was originally written in August 2024. However, additional document releases related to these…
The Department of Defense (DoD) has released 151 pages of internal records related to the…
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has released a series of previously undisclosed documents confirming…
Newly released Air Force records confirm that Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (WPAFB) in Ohio experienced…
Newly released documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) reveal that the U.S.…
The CIA’s history of losing or mismanaging UFO-related records continues with yet another example, this…