Mission
The spacecraft was launched on an Air Force-Convair Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile coupled to Thor-Able upper stages including an Able x 248 rocket third stage, on November 26, 1959. The fiberglass payload shroud broke away 45 seconds after launch, subjecting the payload and third stage rocket to critical aerodynamic loads. At 104 seconds after launch, communications with the upper stages was lost and the payload was stripped off followed by the third stage. Telemetry indicated the first and second stages continued as programmed.
Read more about this topic: Pioneer P-3
Famous quotes containing the word mission:
“... [a] girl one day flared out and told the principal “the only mission opening before a girl in his school was to marry one of those candidates [for the ministry].” He said he didn’t know but it was. And when at last that same girl announced her desire and intention to go to college it was received with about the same incredulity and dismay as if a brass button on one of those candidate’s coats had propounded a new method for squaring the circle or trisecting the arc.”
—Anna Julia Cooper (1859–1964)
“We can come up with a working definition of life, which is what we did for the Viking mission to Mars. We said we could think in terms of a large molecule made up of carbon compounds that can replicate, or make copies of itself, and metabolize food and energy. So that’s the thought: macrocolecule, metabolism, replication.”
—Cyril Ponnamperuma (b. 1923)
“Every Age has its own peculiar faith.... Any attempt to translate into facts the mission of one Age with the machinery of another, can only end in an indefinite series of abortive efforts. Defeated by the utter want of proportion between the means and the end, such attempts might produce martyrs, but never lead to victory.”
—Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–1872)