Just 50 years ago, the Pioneer 10 probe became the first man-made object to pass Mars, enter the so-called outer solar system, and come close to Jupiter.
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At the beginning of December 1973, less than two years after its launch, the small American probe Pioneer 10 flew over Jupiter, only 130,000 kilometers above its atmosphere, the inner suburbs on the scale of space.
In a NASA film released a few months later, the images sent by the probe reveal never-before-seen details of the cloud layers above Jupiter. Pioneer 10 also sends images of Io, Ganymede, Callisto, Europa: the moons of the gas giant are beginning to be revealed. “When Pioneer 10 flew over them, we started to see what it was, says Francois Forget, astrophysicist and research director at the CNRS. But we had to wait a few more years and the missions that followed (Voyager 1 and Voyager 2) to really discover the nature of these moons.”
“What we discovered then is that the moons of giant planets are real worlds, interesting in their own right. It’s almost a new science!”
François Forget, astrophysicistat franceinfo
The European Juice probe, which left last spring, will visit these rock and ice moons again in 2031. Its ancestor Pioneer 10 has not given any sign of life since 2003, undoubtedly sinking into the confines of the solar system, billions of kilometers from us.