Pioneer 10 has successfully been commanded to perform a precession maneuver to repoint the spacecraft towards Earth. The operation was accomplished on February 11-12 with the signal level increasing 0.5-0.75 dBM as result of the maneuver.
This was the seventh successful maneuver that has been done in the dark since 26 January 1997. It was determined at that time that the RTG power had been degraded to the point where the spacecraft transmitter had to be turned off to attain enough power to perform the procedure.
After 90 minutes in the blind the transmitter was turned back on again. The round trip light time during this latest maneuver was 20 hours 34 minutes.
Pioneer 10 will continue to be tracked via the DSN. With science data received to support advanced concept studies of chaos theory.
In addition, Pioneer 10 mission management will be used by NASA to
help develop advanced communications technology for future generations of
missions going beyond the heliopause and on into the interstellar medium.
Distance from Sun (1 February 2000): 74.46 AU Speed relative to the Sun: 12.24 km/sec (27,380 mph) Distance from Earth: 11.07 billion kilometers (6.879 billion miles) Round-trip Light Time: 20 hours 30 minutes
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