Pioneer 11 - Current Status

Current Status

On September 9, 2012, Pioneer 11 was 86.005 AU (1.28662×1010 km; 7.9947×109 mi) from the Earth and 86.396 AU (1.29247×1010 km; 8.0310×109 mi) from the Sun; and traveling at 11.376 km/s (25,450 mph) (relative to the Sun) and traveling outward at about 2.400 AU per year. Sunlight takes 11.92 hours to get to Pioneer 11. The brightness of the Sun from the spacecraft is magnitude -17.0. Pioneer 11 is heading in the direction of the constellation Scutum.

On September 29, 1995, NASA's Ames Research Center, responsible for managing the project, issued a press release that began, "After nearly 22 years of exploration out to the farthest reaches of the Solar System, one of the most durable and productive space missions in history will come to a close." It indicated NASA would use its Deep Space Network antennas to listen "once or twice a month" for the spacecraft's signal, until "some time in late 1996" when "its transmitter will fall silent altogether." NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin characterized Pioneer 11 as "the little spacecraft that could, a venerable explorer that has taught us a great deal about the Solar System and, in the end, about our own innate drive to learn. Pioneer 11 is what NASA is all about -- exploration beyond the frontier."

Besides announcing the end of operations, the dispatch provides a historical list of Pioneer 11 mission achievements. It also provided status of the preceding probe, "Pioneer 10 continues to return scientific data and may have enough power to last until 1999. At almost six billion miles, Pioneer 10 is the most distant object built by humans."

Pioneer 10 has now been overtaken by the two Voyager probes, launched in 1977, and Voyager 1 is now the most distant object built by humans.