Pioneer program#Early missions

Credit for naming the first probe has been attributed to Stephen A. Saliga, who had been assigned to the Air Force Orientation Group, Wright-Patterson AFB, as chief designer of Air Force exhibits. While he was at a briefing, the spacecraft was described to him, as, a "lunar-orbiting vehicle, with an infrared scanning device." Saliga thought the title too long, and lacked theme for an exhibit design. He suggested, "Pioneer", as the name of the probe, since "the Army had already launched and orbited the Explorer satellite, and their Public Information Office was identifying the Army, as, 'Pioneers in Space,'" and, by adopting the name, the Air Force would "make a 'quantum jump' as to who, really, [were] the 'Pioneers' in space.'"

{{cite web | url = https://history.nasa.gov/SP-4402/ch3.htm#88

| title = Origins of NASA Names | access-date = 2006-10-16

| work = NASA History | publisher = www.history.nasa.gov }}

The earliest missions were attempts to achieve Earth's escape velocity, simply to show it was feasible and to study the Moon. This included the first launch by NASA which was formed from the old NACA. These missions were carried out by the Air Force Ballistic Missile Division, Army, and NASA.{{Cite web|url=https://www.losangeles.spaceforce.mil/?ver=2016-05-02-112846-557|title = Los Angeles Air Force Base > Home}}

File:Pioneer I, Reconstructed Replica.jpg

File:Pioneer IV flight spare 01.jpg

File:Pioneer P-1 P-3 P-30 P-31.jpg

• Pioneer 3 – Lunar flyby, missed Moon due to launcher failure December 6, 1958
• Pioneer 4 – Lunar flyby, achieved Earth escape velocity, launched March 3, 1959

File:NASM-NASM2016-00083.jpg

Five years after the early Able space probe missions ended, NASA Ames Research Center used the Pioneer name for a new series of missions, initially aimed at the inner Solar System, before the flyby missions to Jupiter and Saturn. While successful, the missions returned much poorer images than the Voyager program probes would five years later. In 1978, the end of the program saw a return to the inner Solar System, with the Pioneer Venus Orbiter and Multiprobe, this time using orbital insertion rather than flyby missions.

The new missions were numbered beginning with Pioneer 6 (alternate names in parentheses).

The spacecraft in Pioneer missions 6, 7, 8, and 9 comprised a new interplanetary space weather network:

• Pioneer 6 (Pioneer A) – launched December 1965
• Pioneer 7 (Pioneer B) – launched August 1966
• Pioneer 8 (Pioneer C) – launched December 1967
• Pioneer 9 (Pioneer D) – launched November 1968 (inactive since 1983)
• Pioneer E – lost in launcher failure August 1969

Pioneer 6 and Pioneer 9 are in solar orbits with 0.8 AU distance to the Sun. Their orbital periods are therefore slightly shorter than Earth's. Pioneer 7 and Pioneer 8 are in solar orbits with 1.1 AU distance to the Sun. Their orbital periods are therefore slightly longer than Earth's. Since the probes' orbital periods differ from that of the Earth, from time to time, they face a side of the Sun that cannot be seen from Earth. The probes can sense parts of the Sun several days before the Sun's rotation reveals it to ground-based Earth orbiting observatories.

File:Outersolarsystem-probes-4407b.svg (purple) and Voyager 2 (red) spacecraft, as of April 4, 2007]]

File:Pioneer10-plaque.jpg attached to Pioneers 10 and 11]]

• Pioneer 10 (Pioneer F) – Jupiter, interstellar medium, launched March 1972
• Pioneer 11 (Pioneer G) – Jupiter, Saturn, interstellar medium, launched April 1973
• Pioneer H – proposed out-of-ecliptic mission for 1974, never launched. Would have used flight spare for Pioneers 10 and 11.{{cite web |title= Pioneer H, Jupiter Swingby Out-of-the-Ecliptic Mission Study |url= https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19930073120_1993073120.pdf |date= 20 August 1971 |access-date= 7 July 2017 |archive-date= 14 May 2010 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20100514075504/https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19930073120_1993073120.pdf |url-status= dead }}

{{Main|Pioneer Venus project}}

• Pioneer Venus Orbiter (Pioneer Venus 1, Pioneer 12) – launched May 1978
• Pioneer Venus Multiprobe (Pioneer Venus 2, Pioneer 13) – launched August 1978
• Pioneer Venus Probe Bus – transport vehicle and upper atmosphere probe
• Pioneer Venus Large Probe – 300 kg parachuted probe
• Pioneer Venus North Probe – 75 kg impactor probe
• Pioneer Venus Night Probe – 75 kg impactor probe
• Pioneer Venus Day Probe – 75 kg impactor probe

• Mariner program
• Pioneer anomaly
• Ranger program
• Surveyor program
• Timeline of Solar System exploration
• Voyager program

{{Reflist}}

{{Commons category}}

• [https://web.archive.org/web/20071017210114/http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/profile.cfm?MCode=Pioneer_Moon Pioneer (Moon) Program Page] by [http://solarsystem.nasa.gov NASA's Solar System Exploration]
• [http://www.nap.edu/books/0309090504/html/ Mark Wolverton's The Depths of Space online]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20020228155848/http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/thorable.htm Thor Able – Encyclopedia Astronautica]
• [http://www.sdfo.org/stl/ Space Technology Laboratories Documents Archive]
• [http://spacecrafts3d.org/models/pioneer.html WebGL-based 3D artist's view of Pioneer @ SPACECRAFTS 3D]

{{Pioneer program | before=None, see contemporaneous program Mariner | after=Voyager }}

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Category:1958 in spaceflight

Category:NASA programs